Brief flurries precede wet weekend
Published 6:53 pm Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Suffolk had its first taste of snow for the season on Wednesday, but the snow didn’t last long and didn’t accumulate much or at all in most parts of the city.
December in the South doesn’t usually see snow. National Weather Service meteorologist Jon McGee said the last big snow in December he can remember was in 2010, a storm that started on Christmas Day and dropped more than a foot of snow across most of Suffolk.
Other areas surrounding Suffolk reported small snowfalls, but no location reported anything over an inch, which was in Richmond. Wakefield reported just over a half-inch, and Norfolk reported only one-tenth of an inch.
“Suffolk was the line where the snow was falling, and they got little to snow. It was cold enough to have the snow, but as it fell to the ground it was warmer, so it didn’t have a chance to stick,” McGee said.
While the small snowfall happened early, McGee doesn’t anticipate an overly snowy winter.
“I don’t know about it being snowy. It will probably be average to a little bit above average,” McGee said. “We will have bouts of cold weather with warmer and milder days intermingled because of the current pattern we are in right now.”
Precipitation is in Suffolk’s future this weekend, but children won’t have the chance to play in the snow. Suffolk will likely experience just a moment of snow followed by up to 2 inches of rain over the weekend.
“Suffolk is in the transition area, and there is the potential of 1 to 2 inches of liquid, some in the form of snow,” McGee said. “It is going to be a wet system, probably with some decent wind. There is a strengthening storm off the coast, and we can easily be looking at up to 40 mile-per-hour winds and coastal flooding.
“It’s going to be a very impactful storm.”
There is a chance for brief snow during the precipitation, but Suffolk will more likely see all rain.