CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Just when West Virginians thought winter was about to conclude with a whimper, Mother Nature seems to have one strong gasp left for us. A cold front moving eastward brought the first of what will be several winter storm patterns into the region Friday morning. The system left several inches of snowfall across northern counties of West Virginia and especially the northern mountains.
The next system, according to National Weather Service Meteorologist John Victory at the Charleston Weather Bureau, will come Saturday night into Sunday. However, the Mountain State won’t have to worry to much about that one.
“That’s the one we were talking about for days and days,” he said. “But that one has been shunted south so most of West Virginia will be precip free from that, just some light snow in the far southern coalfields and southern mountains Saturday night and Sunday morning.”
The one forecasters are eyeing closest will be a system due to arrive Monday night through Wednesday. That system could pack quite a punch according to Victory.
“This one looks to be more serious because its taking on a climatologically winter type pattern,” he explained. “Which means for us when it arrives Monday, we’ll get some rain, but behind that we could get some pretty good snow activity into Wednesday.”
Victory estimated there would be the potential for significant accumulation, even in the western lowlands of West Virginia. However, it’s difficult to say just how many inches will pile up on the ground at this point.
“We could very well see some accumulations for that,” he said. “However at this time of year most of the accumulation we see will come at night. This time of year the solar radiation is such that it would limit that during the day.”
One thing Victory could say for sure was temperatures will plummet. Hard freezes are expected, especially in the overnight hours. That could mean doom for a lot of flowers and buds which were coaxed out in the last three weeks with above normal temperatures and spring like conditions.