The battle of the atmosphere brings a wide variety of time in Virginia – cardinal news

“Two most difficult children in the block. … Sooner or later they will fight. ”

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Tanner, played by Powers Booth, can refer (fortunately not predicted) of the United States and the Soviet Union in the movie from the 1980s “Red Dawn”, but there is some resonance with why it is It was a few days such a few days for southwest and southern Virginia.

Last Thursday, he brought a frozen rain, accompanied by lightning (the big boom of the thunderstorms woke me up!) And later during the day, strong thunderstorms with hail in parts of southwestern Virginia. (Deadly tornado struck Eastern Tennessee in this storm blow.) Tuesday and Wednesday were full of snow, rainfall, freezing rain and rain. There will be temperature shooting in the 1950s on Thursday, a potentially heavy rain over the weekend, a return to windy cold at the beginning of the next and possibly another winter storm by the middle of next week.

During the past week of time, it was a heavyweight variety between the dominant meteorological characteristic of the last soft winters, the warm high pressure ridge by the Southeast US Coast and the dominant cold winter we have had high pressure in the common area of ​​the West Canada, Alaska and the North Pacific Ocean, driving a frigid air from the Arctic via Canada through the Central and Eastern United States

A few months ago, it was assumed that the developing La Niña, cool waters in the Equatorial Pacific, would lead to an almost winter high pressure model from the southeastern US coast, diverting cold fronts and winter storms, as it was often to at least some extent through The last six winters. But La Nina was late and weak in forming, and other climatic factors took control of the hemisphere to bring us a much more winter winter.

For a while, it looked like Bermuda High, as we sometimes call it, it would restore the recent mild order to this winter and we made a thawing from the deep cold of January for much of the first week of February. But the Arctic cold model began to recover and seemed to take control again next week for a probable colder than the normal last half of February.

In the last few days, the transition between the two, with fighters, trading strokes, causing an active time for much of the United States, including Virginia.

Two more systems for days ahead will track well west of our region, pulling smaller air up with their moisture. Some cold air can be caught over the snow package and against the mountains on this Wednesday night for some extra freezing rain in parts of West Virginia, but much of the ice and snow that have fallen and gathered will disappear after a slight tide on Thursday, Who can reach the 50 for many.

The rain over the weekend can be quite heavy, but it will probably be soft enough to prevent additional wide winter meteorological effects. Behind this storm system, however, the chow air begins to rush for next week.

This takes us to the middle of next week, when the meteorological characteristics can be aligned to form low pressure near the shore of the Persian Gulf and move up the east coast-can. This could lead to another threat to the winter storm for Virginia and much of the southern and eastern part of the United States, but of course, at that distance it may not escape or may be a little more different in its evolution.

We can review the details of this for days. We will still have several winter problems to deal with right now.

Journalist Kevin Mayat has been writing for 20 years. His weekly column, which appears on Wednesday, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family, local funeral home with places in the Roanoke valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

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