CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A rare touch down of a tornado and path across Kanawha County into downtown Charleston tops the weather headlines for the Mountain State in 2019, according to one National Weather Service Meteorologist.
Ross Giarratana, a NWS Meteorologist based in Charleston, spoke with MetroNews on Tuesday about his thoughts of 2019 in West Virginia weather-wise. He said the number one headline sticks out.
“You have this tornado producing thunderstorm that developed southwest of Charleston. Basically, the tornado ended up dissipating near the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston,” Giarratana said.
“For that to hit one of our most populated areas and forecast area, is something we do not see every year.”
The June 2019 twister touched down near the Lincoln County/Kanawha County line in the Alum Creek area.
According to the NWS, it was an EF1 with winds speeds of up to 90 mph and was on the ground for approximately 11 miles with a width of 0.2 miles before dissipating near the Kanawha River near downtown Charleston.
At least 27,000 customers of Appalachian Power just in Kanawha County did not have service at the peak of the rare storm.
VIEW: NWS full summary of the tornado
Giarratana believed other than the tornado, the mild temperatures to end 2019 and lack of snow were major headlines.
The average snowfall for a season in the Charleston area is just over 30 inches but most places around the state were well below. Giarratana said the Charleston area saw nine inches of snow in 2019.
Little or no accumulation of snow has fallen in most parts of the state at the beginning of this current Winter season with temperatures well above normal.
Giarratana called the run of mild temperatures for the last couple of weeks in 2019 a “fairly remarkable stretch.”
Temperatures around the state hit in the 50s and 60s for most of Christmas week and New Year’s week, nearly reaching 70.
“A lot of it was not necessarily record-breaking warmth in the sense that a lot of us were in the mid to upper 60s,” Giarratana said. “It was exceptionally above normal but a lot of areas managed to not break their daily high records.”
The normalcy of the weather year comes in terms of rain and other precipitation, according to Giarratana.
Charleston saw 46.91 inches of rain in 2019, right at the seasonal mark. In 2018, Charleston saw 67.05 inches of rain in one of the wettest on record.
Four other climate sites of the NWS in Huntington, Beckley, Elkins, and Parkersburg all recorded just above seasonal averages for rainfall for the year.
Clarksburg recorded 41.6 inches of rain, which is slightly below the normal of 45 inches.