(Photos by Doug Thompson)
Floyd County public schools remain closed Tuesday as the area continues to try and dig out of the snow storm that left about a foot of white stuff on the ground.
No word yet on a scheduled basketball game against Radford at the high school gym Tuesday night. School officials will have to consider rain and a possibility of black ice on the roadways after the sun goes down,.
Floyd County Supervisors also have their second regular meeting of the month set for 7:00 p.m. at the county administration building 120 West Oxford Street.
Circuit Court has an abbreviated session set for 9:00 a.m. Tuesday. A plea bargain eliminated the need for a trial and the docket is a short one.
Is the county returning to normal after the two-day storm that still has Washington, DC, and New York City stalled?
“We’re working at it,” said a snow plow driver on U.S. 221 Monday afternoon. “There’s a lot of snow here and it has to be moved someplace.”
Large piles of snow appear on parking lots after clearance. Some of the accumulation is being hauled off. Other mini mountains of snow still sit in piles on lots and along side of roads & streets.
The snow that fell on Friday and Saturday came up short of predictions that forecast 30 inches or more. Others areas of the Commonwealth recieved more. Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, may have the record: 66 inches of snow (5 feet, six inches). The mountain is the highest elevation east of the Mississippi.
According to the National Weather Service, the moisture from melting snow and falling temperatures at night add to a black ice warning throughout the area. With temperatures Tuesday morning already above freezing (37 degrees at 5:45 a.m.) and climbing to 44 by 4 p,m. shower expected to arrive at 2 p.m. Tuesday should help reduce the amount of snow on the ground.
Roanoke Times weather guru Kevin Myatt says the rain could be snow west of Interstate 77 if it is colder there and a projected low of 28 overnight on Tuesday could create a little snowfall locally after midnight.
Wednesday will be cooler with a high of 35 and a low overnight of 20 degrees before 45 degrees on Thursday and mid-to-high 50s on Saturday and Sunday and remaining there well into the first week of February.
A few days between this week and the middle of next week will hit the 50s and we might even see one day scrape 60 from the Roanoke Valley south and east. That should take care of most of the rest of this snowpack. A strong cold front is likely to arrive late next week to re-introduce Arctic air. It is uncertain if this will be a long-lasting cold pattern or something temporary, but the El Nino-charged subtropical jet stream makes any cold air patterns suspect for winter storm potential.
There’s that damned El Nino again.
