Storm of the century!
Valley braces for a foot or two of snow this weekend
Staff Report
Submit weather-related news and cancellations: freepress2@ntelos.net
The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for the Central Shenandoah Valley from 6 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Sunday with a forecast for 1 to 2 feet of snow possible.
Locally higher amounts of up to 3 feet are possible at higher elevations.
The snow is expected to begin between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Friday and will continue through Saturday night. The snow is projected to be heaviest between 1 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday.
Temperatures will be well below freezing for the duration of the event – in the mid- to upper-20s in the Valley and the mid-20s at higher elevations.
Winds will be sustained at 10 to 15 mph with gusts to 25 mph on Saturday and Sunday.
Stay tuned to AugustaFreePress.com for further information as it becomes available.
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How is this going to affect the Waynesboro Downtown activities this evening?
We just got a note from WDDI that we are going to report on more thoroughly in a few minutes, but it’s worth sharing here. The Christmas in the River City event is going on as scheduled this evening.
While this is a serious storm I can’t help but laugh at the “Storm of the Century” heading as this means the worst one in nearly eight years!
Also, when seeing “Augusta” and no mention of what state on the newspaper flag, at first I thought of Augusta, Ga. Might be good to have your town name listed now that you can have world-wide readership on-line.
Reg
We’re located in Augusta County, Virginia. Which was here before anybody had even thought of a Georgia. (Our county boundaries once stretched to the Mississippi River to the west and to the Great Lakes in the north.)
We’ve been here eight years now. Yours is the third comment in that time expressing issues with possible confusion between Augusta County, Va., and Augusta, Ga.
(Note of possible interest: The masthead on the website of the Augusta, Ga.,-based Augusta Chronicle lacks any reference to the state of Georgia.)
(Note of possible interest #2: For our readers in the Valley, a storm dumping 1 to 2 feet of snow would be the biggest since a 1996 storm that dumped 3 feet here. We haven’t had more than 10 inches since that storm. And that one was in the 20th century. Storm of the century – for us, yep!)
It’s snowing in Downtown Waynesboro!
How much did it snow in the February 2003 storm or storms? I remember that one in Waynesboro.
We hadn’t had more than five inches of snow here since 1999. We had five inches two weeks ago, so we were pushing the limit there.
Well, I think that my Brandon Ladd neighborhood got more than 5” of snow from the North American Blizzard of 2003. Perhaps we were just lucky!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_2003
I remember that I-81 in the Valley, perhaps in Shenandoah County, was a horrible mess for a day or two from that storm, with hundreds of cars and tractor trailers stopped and abandoned.
It actually sounds kind of like yesterday evening in the Charlottesville area. I’m assuming that people in the Valley generally have better sense and know if they can get around in the snow.
According to the National Weather Service weather report linked to that Wikipedia entry, the eastern half of the Greater Augusta area was in the six-inch snow range. The western half was in the three-inch range. The Albemarle area was in the five-inch range.
That’s February 7, 2003, right? I don’t even remember that storm in particular. No, the next page has an incredibly blurry map for the big February 14-18 blizzard. Most of Augusta and Albemarle Counties are in the 6-12 inch range. Northwestern portions of both counties are in the 12-18 inch range.
Anyway, that storm hit areas to the north harder, so this snowfall will be a lot more in the local area.
What I remember from that storm – not enough snow to build a decent snowman. I can build a snow army today. And based on the weather forecast for the next few days, I won’t lose many of my soldiers to attrition.