We start off the new year with another coating of snow on the ground, especially in areas from Beckley northward into Nicholas and Pocahontas Counties. Snowfall totals ranged from 3 to around 7 inches and were heaviest in the two northernmost counties. These are the top 6 reports from our area associated with the most recent storm.
As the night goes on, there will be more chances for snow. Once again, the snow will mainly be in the same areas that saw snow last night. In northwestern Pocahontas County, some patchy freezing drizzle could mix in, and the National Weather Service office in Charleston has issued a Winter Weather Advisory in effect until 11 a.m. tomorrow for northwestern Pocahontas County due to the possibility of freezing drizzle.
Any ice accumulations will not be that high, but it doesn’t take much to cause issues on the roads.
Elsewhere around the region, patchy ice is possible on the roads due to re-freezing. Lows tonight will drop into the upper 20s, not exactly warm but warmer than it has been.
The weather will be calmer tomorrow. Despite some thick cloud cover, highs will be around 40 degrees. It’s the start of a warming trend that sees temperatures rise into the middle 50s by the end of the forecast. Even the lows will be in the 40s, much higher than the recent high temperatures.
With the warmer air taking hold, the next couple of systems that come through will produce rain instead of snow. The first is a system coming from the southwest that will bring us some rain on Saturday. The question will be how far north it tracks. For now, we’re expecting rain predominantly in the southern coalfields for the first half of the weekend.
Another system from that same southwesterly direction will give us even better (and more widespread) rain chances on Wednesday and Thursday.
A LOOK BACK AT DECEMBER TEMPERATURES – A TALE OF TWO HALVES
Now that we have finished December, we can look back at the temperature trends that we saw during the month. We started the month with very cold temperatures. The first six days of the month saw the gates to the cold air in Arctic Canada opened as temperatures struggled to reach the 40-degree mark, only making it there three times in the first 15 days of the month. The morning of the 15th saw the low drop to -1 in both Beckley and Bluefield, the first time in either city this season.
But the switch flipped around the middle of the month, and starting on the 17th, we saw 13 consecutive days of above normal temperatures. Four times during that span, we reached 60 degrees in Beckley, including a monthly high of 62 on the 29th. The switch flipped back to cold at the end of the month, leading to the cold snap that we are currently experiencing.
Be sure to check out the video version of the forecast below…
https://youtu.be/Bn0fLXa2XiI
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