ROANOKE, Va. – The Matts Creek fire continues to burn and spread on the Bedford-Rockbridge County line Tuesday morning.
Smoke from the fire is stagnant in the lowest layers of the atmosphere. You’ll notice that in parts of the Roanoke Valley, along with parts of Craig, Alleghany, Rockbridge and Bedford Counties Tuesday morning.
By the afternoon, a shift in the wind will bring most of the smoke and poor air quality into northern Botetourt, southern Rockbridge, Alleghany and southern Bath Counties.
Monday will be a cooler and dry day with highs in the 50s. Cooler air will continue to seep into the region at night.
Then, we FINALLY get a widespread, soaking rain Tuesday. Periods of rain will go on from early morning and into the night. Now, there will be some dry periods, but we’d expect the radar to fill back in.
Some heavy pockets will be possible, especially during the second half of the day.
This amounts to most of the area seeing anywhere from 1-3″ of rain. That’s huge!
We need 4-8″ in a four-week time frame to eliminate the drought, so this is a nice step in the right direction. The last time we saw 1″ of rain in a single day was shortly after Labor Day.
Some showers may linger east of the Roanoke Valley into Wednesday, but Thanksgiving Day looks beautiful.
A few showers will be possible Black Friday, but the overall pattern thousands of feet above us is disjointed. The northern and southern pieces of the pattern need to be more connected/phased in order for widespread precipitation to happen.