Strong Storm System Wednesday

A strong upper-level storm system will track through the Southeast U.S. Wednesday, bringing strong winds and periods of heavy rain to the region through tonight. There may also be severe thunderstorms from Wednesday afternoon into tonight in the yellow highlighted area above. The primary threat in Virginia will be damaging winds, but there is also a small possibility for isolated tornadoes as well, mainly close to Norfolk/Suffolk/VA Beach.

Moisture will surge northward into Central Virginia Wednesday afternoon and tonight with southerly winds 15-25mph.

This will allow temperatures to continue rising after sunset into the upper 50's around Midnight. With the increased low-level moisture, strong upper-lift, and vertical wind shear, rain and thunderstorms will be possible late afternoon into the overnight in Central Virginia. Here's the upper-level vorticity around Midnight:

Here's a snapshot of the CAPE around Midnight:

In addition to the periods of heavy rain, winds will be gusty around 30mph in Central Virginia this evening and overnight. If you have any lightweight outdoor Christmas decorations or furniture, you might want to secure that today. There is also a Wind Advisory for the orange highlighted counties below. Along the mountains, gusts may reach 50mph, which would affect high-profile vehicles traveling along I-81.
We'll be keeping a close watch on this developing situation today and tonight!

Richmond Finally Freezes!

Talk about being fashionably late! Richmond International Airport finally froze, with a morning low December 1, 2009 of 30 degrees. This is just one day shy of the latest Fall freeze on record for RIC from December 2, 1959. The average first Fall freeze is October 29th at the airport. The cold front that moved through last night brought cooler, drier air into the region with clearing skies and light winds. The closest we came to freezing before this morning was November 7, with a low temperature of 33 degrees at RIC. It looks like the coldest temperatures of the season so far will arrive in a few days, with this weekend being one to sit by the fire or bundle up for the parade Saturday! Morning lows Saturday and Sunday are expected to be around freezing, with highs only in the 40's.

Official November Rain Total

November is in the books, and it was a record-breaker for precipitation at Richmond International Airport. November 2009 became the new wettest November on record at RIC, with 9.60" of rainfall recorded. This obliterated the old record of 7.64" from November 1959 by about two inches!

Richmond wasn't the only city in Virginia to break rain records in November. Norfolk also recorded its wettest November on record with 9.20", breaking its old wettest November of 7.01" from 1951. Norfolk was also about two inches over its old record!