Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt: Month pulled out of dry hole
Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.
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This past weekend's rains will keep September from going down as a very dry month.
Roanoke had a little more than 2½ inches of rain over the weekend, most of it Saturday, putting the month at 3.14 inches going into what is very likely to be a dry last day. Normal rainfall for September is 3.85 inches.
Blacksburg had a bit more than 2 inches Friday through Sunday, most of it Saturday, as anyone at the Virginia TechMiami game could attest. At 2.33 inches total for the month, September will still be below the 3.39 inches that is considered normal.
Climate normals, as figured by the National Climatic Data Center, are the 30-year averages from 1971 to 2000. In a few years, the normals will roll over to the 1981-2010 period.
September has been slightly more than a degree above normal in both Roanoke (69.5 degrees, 1.4 above normal) and Blacksburg (64.4 degrees, 1.1 above normal). Today's cooler than normal temperatures might bump those figures down a bit.
Slightly above normal temperatures have been the rule in 2009, with March, April, June and August also about a degree above normal. January was extremely close to normal, February much above normal, and July much below normal.
While the month will start out cool, with possibly even some 30s in remote valleys by Thursday morning, atmospheric signals point to slightly warmer than normal temperatures again the rule in much of the first half of October.
