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February 9, 2010

Record snow

Beckley sets record for January with 40.9 inches of snow

By Courtney D. Clark

January was a month for the record books in Beckley, the National Weather Service says.

According to Ray Young, meteorologist with the NWS in Charleston, the city set a record for January snowfall, accumulating 40.9 inches.

“Our records go back to at least the 1950s,” Young said Tuesday, “and January 2010 set a new record in Beckley.”

He said the previous record was 37.3 inches, set in 1996.

In addition, totals for the winter so far add up to 86.9 inches of snow in Beckley since the Dec. 18-19 storm that snarled traffic and left many roads nearly impassable for days.

“The thing that’s interesting about that is even though the winter is not over yet, the 86.9 inches actually qualify this season as the fourth-snowiest winter ever in Beckley,” Young added.

The NWS reports 32 days of snowfall since that first winter storm.

Anita Silverman, NWS meteorologist in Blacksburg, Va., which covers Summers, Greenbrier, Monroe and Mercer counties, said Bluefield is lagging a bit behind with snow for the season totaling only 55.5 inches.

“There’s been some occasional day records broken, but we’re still way short of our records for the season,” she said.

“The last record for Bluefield is 81.5 inches in 1987, and we’re obviously still way off from that,” Silverman added

According to the 2010 Farmer’s Almanac, three-quarters of the nation was expected to see temperatures below average this winter, and NWS reports show the prediction has turned to fact.

Silverman said the average temperature for January was below normal by about 4 degrees for Bluefield, and down by 2 degrees in December.

“I can’t give you exact numbers and temperatures for all areas, but I can tell you January in Beckley averaged 4.4 degrees below normal, and though it didn’t quite make our top 10 coldest, it wasn’t far off,” Young said.

“December averaged about 3 degrees below normal, and we’re running 4.2 below so far in February.”

“It’s true for Raleigh, Fayette, Nicholas and Wyoming counties — area-wide — that everyone’s been running colder than normal,” he added. “That’s why we’ve been snowier than normal. Those two go hand-in-hand.”

The Farmer’s Almanac also predicted significant snowfalls for parts of every zone. Forecasts show blizzards in store, as the Mid-Atlantic is warned to brace for a major snowfall in mid-February.

Meteorologists concur. Young told The Register-Herald the pattern for next week will bring more cold and occasional systems moving through.

“What combines to give West Virginia a good snowfall is the southern jet stream being extremely active, while the northern jet stream brings cold air on top of us,” he continued.

“That’s what we’ve had this year and that’s what we had in 1996, when the last extreme winter broke all of the records.”

Silverman agreed, predicting below normal temperatures for Greenbrier, Summers and Monroe counties through the end of February.

While it can be tiresome to be the bearer of bad tidings, the meteorologists say overall, the crazy weather helps keep their jobs interesting.

“It’s never fun to give people bad news,” Young said, “but we actually enjoy the weather because we like to see how everything evolves.

“I think most of us would be bored if the forecast was always the same. This season has definitely been interesting.”

— E-mail: cclark@register-herald.com

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