Here we are, one-third of the way through May, and the temperature sits at under 60 degrees shortly after 8:15 p.m. on this Monday. Is this Spring?
With rain overnight in some parts of the area, the high for Floyd County is projected to be about 65 degrees with a low of 45, says the forecast from the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg.
It’s not gonna improve on Tuesday, with a high of 64 and 42 low, then 60 on Wednesday and 39 low before warming a little bit, but not much, later in the week.
Next week projects warming weather in the 70s and lows in the 50s in a pattern that is expected to continue through Memorial Day.
Rain is also forecast for next week, starting on Tuesday and continuing into the weekend.
Several words come to mind to describe the upcoming weather but all of them are obscene and will not be repeated here.
For those of us with old age hampered by arthritis, wet weather is seldom good news. My joints ache and stiffness limit motion but my wife reminds me that “it is better than the alternative.” Living with an eternal optimist keeps one smiling between the aches and pains.
If a doctor’s appointment in a week clears me for resuming a fitness schedule at the reopened Floyd Fitness Center, maybe I can work out the stiffness and limber up for the summer.
Weather permitting, the next three weeks will be busy with photographing high school sport, along with covering Circuit Court and the Board of Supervisors for The Floyd Press. Hopefully, the dropping numbers of COVID-19 will bring the reopening of businesses and music venues that are part of our area’s economy.
Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to lift more restrictions in June unless the pandemic rears its ugly head again and lays residents low with the virus that won’t quit. Floyd continues to add more and more cases along with a new hospitalization over the weekend but no deaths were reported Sunday in the area by the Virginia Department of Health and only 11 new deaths were shown elsewhere in Virginia.
Sunday’s report, which covers cases, hospitalizations, and deaths through 5 p.m. on Saturday, Floyd County had 853 total cases, with 30 hospitalized over the past year and 21 deaths.
That, of course, is lower than the 11,000 plus infected in more populous areas like Montgomery County and Radford, but when you factor in the infections and deaths against the population, the rate in our county is far higher than the New River or Roanoke valleys.
For example, applying Floyd’s population against the rate per 100,000, the deaths stand at 133 while Montgomery’s is 92, says VDH.
“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain once wrote. “Lies, damn lies and statistics.”
Like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder.
But that is a debate for another day.
Stay warm and let’s be careful out there.