Blog: Weekend thaw; ‘warm-up’ looming

Let’s the melting continue!! Temperatures are headed in one direction this weekend… and that’s up! Next week we can look forward to more seasonal weather, which by this point will feel like a nice warm up.

Temperatures will crawl out of the teens and 20s this morning and reach the freezing mark around late morning, then head to around 40° this afternoon. The morning sun will help melt more ice and snow before afternoon clouds roll in. But things will remain dry, as a dry and quiet pattern takes over.

A nice area of high pressure will slide into the region and set up a stretch of quiet & dry weather into most of next week. By tomorrow, morning lows in the 20s go up to near 50° in the afternoon (with plenty of sunshine). So we’re feeling pretty confident by Sunday roads should be totally clear. Next week, temperatures will climb to near 60° from Monday through at least Wednesday.

Things look to remain dry and bright through at least Wednesday of next week, too. This gradual climb in our temperatures with the added sunshine has really improved our road conditions across town.

By the end of the day today, neighborhood streets should just be slick in a few spots. It’s been impressive how well the roads have shaped up a day or two after one of the biggest snowfall events in about a decade. It seems as though roads were better during this snow event, than some of the times we picked up only one or two or three inches of snow! That’s mostly due in part to the fact that Hampton Roads was the bullseye with this snow story, you can see that evidently in the satellite picture from Friday below.

You can see the snow covered ground on satellite only cover Hampton Roads and NE North Carolina. With now significant snow elsewhere across both states, all the resources flooded here to treat and plow the roads!

Also, it’s been impressive how quickly the snow and ice has melted on our secondary and neighborhood roads. Quicker and more efficiently than our past snow event in January when we picked up only around 3″ of snow.

This is due in part to the sporadic temperatures over the past two weeks or so. Notice how February so far hasn’t been all that cold — some 30s, some 40s, some 50s and a few 70s. Compare that to January, which was colder for longer (stretches in the 30s and 20s), the ground this time around didn’t as cold as January. Sure, cold enough for the snow to stick, especially when it snowed as heavy as it did, but not cold enough to stay on the roads for days and days.

There shouldn’t be any additional issues on the roads other than a few slick or icy spots near the snow banks and corners by the end of the weekend.