Parts Of Region See First Snow Of Season

ABINGDON, Va. – Three days before Halloween, residents here and in much of Southwest Virginia woke to a winter wonderland blanketed with the first snow of the season.

While Tuesday’s morning’s early season snow might have been a surprise to some after recent mild winters, weather forecasters and farmers said snow in late October is not unusual for the Mountain Empire.

“It’s not that early to get snow, at least across the higher terrain or in around Southwest Virginia this time of year,” said David Hotz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn. “It’s common to have snow as early as late in October.”

The snowiest spot reported Tuesday was in Wise County, where about 3 inches fell in the High Knob area, Hotz said. A lot of areas of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee received an inch, mostly in areas above 2,000 feet. Tri-Cities Regional Airport recorded only a trace amount of snow.

Hotz said winter predictions from the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center trend toward above-normal temperatures and normal precipitation levels. Weather data do not show an obvious correlation between October snow and a snowy winter.

Bill Daugherty, owner of Woodbrook Limosin Farms in Washington County, Va., said he too expects a normal winter.

“There’s no one watching the weather closer than farmers,” Daugherty said, who said he was prepared for Tuesday’s snow before it came. “I think this is going to be a very typical winter because this is a normal pattern for October … and I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of moisture in the winter.”

Daugherty said he keeps up with forecasts and measures data, while others rely on traditional weather predicting lore such as reading the wooly worm, a caterpillar said to predict the weather with its light and dark bands of color.

An official prediction comes down each year from Banner Elk, North Carolina, where an annual wooly worm festival is held.

“They’re calling it novelty snow … but it’s colder than Christmas out,” Cindy Goedhart, office manager at the Avery County Chamber of Commerce, one of the festival’s sponsors, said of Tuesday’s snow.

She said it was the first snow of the season for Banner Elk, but the wooly worm’s winter prediction, based on its 13 colored bands, doesn’t apply until December.

“Basically, it looks like weeks one through four [the month of December] are cold and snowy. Five, six and seven are just normally cold, and the last six weeks are cold and snowy,” Goedhart said of this year’s prediction. “Especially week 11 [in mid-February] we are expecting severe cold and snow.”

Hotz said no more snow is in the immediate forecast for Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee, though temperatures will be chilly for the next few days and nights. Temperatures are expected to climb during the week.

| (276) 791-0701