THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503040426
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
With winter in its waning days - and officially over as far as the National Weather Service is concerned - light snow fell Friday across wide portions of Virginia and North Carolina and could continue today.
No accumulation was reported, and there were no traffic problems except in a few fringe areas where some sleet and freezing rain fell.
Snowfall was reported on the Peninsula, in Suffolk and Chesapeake and throughout southern and central Virginia, as well as in much of eastern and central North Carolina.
The forecast called for flurries to continue into the evening, possibly mixing with rain after midnight in Hampton Roads. Little or no accumulation was expected.
Rain is likely today, possibly mixed with snow during the morning. The high should be in the lower 40s. The chance of precipitation is 70 percent.
This evening, the chance of rain is 40 percent, and temperatures are expected to stay in the lower to mid-40s.
Sunday's outlook is for occasional drizzle during the morning; otherwise the day should be mostly cloudy with a high in the mid-40s.
The National Weather Service measures the seasons by full months, and, under that scheme, winter ended with the close of February.
And just one year after one of the nastiest winters in memory in the mid-Atlantic region, this year's winter turned out relatively uneventful, with warm temperatures, little snowfall and nearly normal rainfall.
At the National Weather Service office at Norfolk International Airport, December was unusually warm, with an average of 50.1 degrees, 6.3 above normal; January came in at 45.1 degrees, 6 above normal; and February finished near normal at 41.6, or a half-degree above normal.
Taken together, winter's average temperature was 45.6 degrees, well above the normal 41.5.
The three-month period brought a high of 78 on Dec. 7, a record for the date.
Rainfall was below normal through the period, although it was only slightly off the mark in February. As for snow, there was little more than a third of an inch. by CNB