Winter’s icy hand to drag temps down, down, down
The Daily Progress/Megan Lovett
Icicles cover a rock face on the Blue Ridge Parkway, foreshadowing icy weather forecast later in the week.
Break out the mittens and scarves and long johns, a jet stream is headed this way and riding it is a blast of arctic air.
“Boy, it sure is going to get plenty cold,” said Jerry Stenger of the climatology office at the University of Virginia.
A trough in the jet stream will plunge the temperature in the Charlottesville area into the single digits by late Friday and early Saturday, he said.
The National Weather Service calls for temperatures to drop steadily throughout the week, with lows hitting 14 degrees Thursday night and 6 Friday night.
“What compounds the situation is … right now [the forecast calls for] no wind and clear skies,” he said. “That allows for maximum cooling of the atmosphere.”
People in low-lying areas will feel the coldest temperatures, because cold air flows downhill, he said.
The low probably won’t come close to the record for Jan. 17, which stands at 5 degrees below 0, Stenger said.
The weather service also shows a 30 percent chance of snow Wednes-day night, when the low could hit 20. But Stenger said accumulation is doubtful.
“So that’s not the killer,” he said. “The killer’s going to be Friday night, Saturday morning” when temperatures plummet.
Area shelters stay in contact to ensure the homeless have a place to stay when temperatures drop, said Adriana Nicholson, with People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry, an interfaith collaboration of congregations and other community groups that help provide shelter for the homeless.
“In the past, everybody who has been seeking shelter has found shelter,” she said.
A survey conducted in January 2008 by the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless found there were 292 homeless in the Charlottesville area.
PACEM shelters average 35 to 40 males and 10 females each night, Nicholson said.
The looming cold weather likely will mark the coldest temps to hit the area this winter.
The coldest days so far locally, according to Stenger, were Dec. 22, 23 and 24, when the temperature dropped to 15 degrees.
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