THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 11, 1996 TAG: 9611110033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 73 lines
Check the heating oil and stoke the fire: Jack Frost has swung open winter's door six weeks early.
With that, the weather over the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast turned decidedly wintry Sunday, as snow flurries and blustery cold conditions spread from North Carolina and Virginia northward.
``The floodgates of cold are open,'' said Bill Keneely, a meteorologist with The Weather Channel in Atlanta. And the chill won't abate any time soon.
``The cold air mass will remain entrenched over the region through Friday,'' the National Weather Service said Sunday.
The freeze comes courtesy of the jet stream, the upper-atmosphere river of air that often guides weather patterns. In this case, it's blowing northeast into Canada from Washington state and then dipping through Montana, southeast to the Gulf of Mexico, across Florida and then northeast, offshore to near New England.
That's made it possible for cold Canadian air to pour south into the United States. The chill extends even into portions of Florida, where the Panhandle was expected to see temperatures dip to freezing overnight.
The warm spot? The Southwest, where Los Angeles hit 94 on Sunday and Phoenix reached 88. .
In Eastern Virginia, temperatures are not likely to rise above the 40s before Saturday, with overnight lows routinely slipping to near freezing.
``It's just really not going to change that much'' before the weekend, said Mike Bono of The Weather Channel.
Sunday's high at the National Weather Service office at Norfolk International Airport was 48 - 15 degrees below normal for the date. But that didn't really tell the story of how cold it was Sunday, given that the high came shortly after midnight, a remnant of warmer weather the day before.
By 7 a.m., it was 38 at the airport, and even though winds were only about 10 mph, that was enough of a wind chill to make it feel like it was 31. At the same time, at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, the mercury said it was 34, but the wind chill reading was 26.
The temperature hovered in the mid-40s through the afternoon and began dipping after sunset.
While Hampton Roads had the feel - but not the look - of winter on Sunday, moderate snow fell for several hours in Lynchburg, Va., and in Greensboro and Asheville, N.C. Still, it was barely enough to measure, except in the mountains, where several inches was reported.
More than an inch fell in Nashville, Tenn., and 1 to 4 inches was on the ground by sunset in West Virginia and western sections of Pennsylvania and Maryland. And heavier snowfall - more than a foot of it - occurred around the Great Lakes as cold winds blew over the warm waters, lifting moisture from the surface and depositing it as snow for hundreds of miles south and east of the lakes.
Such early snowfalls could pave the way for even more cold weather in the mid-Atlantic region, forecasters said, as snow-covered ground keeps the air moving out of Canada from warming.
The upper-level disturbance responsible for clouds and precipitation in Virginia and North Carolina was expected to move offshore overnight with high pressure building behind.
And things will only get colder after that, with a few snow showers over the mountains.
Here is the Hampton Roads forecast:
Today and Tuesday: Partly sunny and chilly with a high in the mid-40s and northwest winds of 10 to 15 mph.
Tonight: Mostly clear and cold with a low in the lower 30s and northwest winds of 10 to 15 mph.
Tuesday: Partly sunny and chilly with a high in the mid- to upper 40s. The overnight low should be in the upper 20s to low 30s.
Wednesday: Partly sunny with a high in the 40s and an overnight low in the lower 30s. ILLUSTRATION: [Illustration] by CNB