ROANOKE, Va. – Friday and Saturday will be overall pleasant days to be outside, as afternoon temperatures mostly reach the 60s.
Come Sunday, we’ll be tracking a powerful storm system that leads to a bunch of changes in our weather.
We start with much-needed rain.
This rain starts out relatively lightly in the morning.
By the afternoon, our system digs farther into the Gulf and acquires a bit of a tilt toward the west. This is a sign of it strengthening, meaning that periods of heavy rain will be possible.
We may even see some gusty thunderstorms in areas like Southside late afternoon into the evening.
On the backside of the storm, the air turns much colder and quickly too. This happens Sunday night. It could lead to a brief burst of snow near and west of the Roanoke Valley.
Given a warm and wet ground, along with a change in wind from the northwest, we’d expect any accumulation to mostly be above 3,000 feet and on our west-facing slopes.
As for rain totals, those look encouraging. Most of our area is in a severe drought, needing three to six inches of rain in a month to get out of it. Most forecast data shows us getting one to two inches of rain out of Sunday’s storm.