Punxsutawney Phil, the shadow-seeing groundhog saw his shadow this week, which means six more weeks of winter. Given the constant changes in forecasts, a groundhog and his shadow are about as accurate as anything else in this cold winter of freezing temperatures, more snowfalls than normal, and a rise in freezing pipe calls to area plumbers.
If the National Weather Service forecast can be believed, which is always a big “IF,” the high temperatures might actually top 40 degrees on Thursday with a low just above freezing but don’t celebrate. The highs might reacy the lower Thursday this weekend but lows will be down in the 20s through next Tuesday and then head further south into the teen for the four days that flow and might climb into the 20s for a while after that.
A wind advisory with gusts up to 50 miles-per-hour remained in effect through 1 p.m. (EST) for Wednesday.
The wind howled through the night around our home overnight and sent the wind chill into single digits for a while.
Which keeps the snow on the ground with patches of both visible and the dangerous hard-to-see black ice.
As this is bring written on Wednesday morning, the forecasts do not call for more snow until Wednesday of next week and that projections says “few snow showers.”
North of us, things are worse with three feet of the white stuff in Pennsylvania, where the state government declared a state of emergency.
“Full-bore winter returned region-wide after a two-year absence,” writes Roanoke Times weather guru Kevin Myatt.
Now it appears that true winter will make several encores in days ahead with colder temperatures than we have seen consistently in at least two years and, possibly, more rounds of snow that keep this season on track to be a fairly normal one for snowfall.
“Yippie ki-yay,” the fictional John McClane used to say in the Die Hard movies. Of course, Bruce Willis usually followed those words with a strong expletive.
Several such expletives have spilled out of my mouth during this cold winter. We were getting used to the warmer winters. The last two witners provided several days of motorcyvle weather. Now my Harley sits in the garage with a battery tender attached.
Still waiting to see if the rescheduled game between the Floyd County High School varsity Buffaloes happens Wednesday night. With luck, the Lady Buffs will be able to celebrate Senior Night on the Thursday game against James River.
Wednesday and Thursday’s matchups could be the last regular-season games of a shortened pandemic schedule.
Fingers crossed…along with toes…and eyes.