Coolest August temperatures in decades visit parts of Virginia

See also: “The legacy and mythology of Camille 55 years later.”

Those sizzling 90s and triple-digits of July were a distant memory on Wednesday morning in Southwest and Southside Virginia as the region experienced some of the coolest August weather it has seen in decades.

Cool, dry Canadian air, pressed southward by high pressure to the north and assisted by the circulation of a low-pressure system offshore from the Southeast U.S., brought on an early taste of fall with 40s lows in many locations across our region and high temperatures that mostly stayed below 80. Similar lows are expected on Thursday morning, before a gradual warmup sets in over the weekend that takes us back to more typical late August temperatures — many 80s highs and 60s lows — next week.

Vaunted cold spot Burke’s Garden in Tazewell County dropped to a downright wintry 38 degrees on Wednesday morning. That was notably cold even for the region’s perennial icebox — it was Burke’s Garden’s coldest August temperature in 20 years, since also recording 38 on Aug. 7, 2004. The last time it was even colder in August: 1989.

Across the state line in West Virginia, a Virginia Tech-operated weather sensor in Canaan Valley, West Virginia, dipped to the freezing mark at 32 degrees. That location commonly sees near- or below-freezing during cooler patterns in summer, and often goes many degrees below zero in winter.

Both Canaan Valley and Burke’s Garden are temperature sinks, where under conditions of radiational cooling on clear nights with calm winds and low dew points cold air sinks to the surface and becomes trapped in bowl-like valleys, causing low temperatures several degrees colder than many nearby locations.

Roanoke didn’t quite make the 40s, but the Star City’s low of 50 on Wednesday morning was the coldest it has been in August so far in the 21 ^st century, the coolest August low temperature since 47 on the last day of August in 1999. It was especially cool for Roanoke given the city is still very much in play for its warmest summer on record, based on average temperature, and reached 103 degrees back on July 15.

Lynchburg also didn’t quite make the 40s, but a low of 52 tied the record low for Aug. 21, equaling the mark set in 1918, 1922 and 1998.

Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee, across the state line from Bristol, recorded a low of 49, smashing the previous Aug. 21 record of 53 set in 2012.

Lows of 43 at Wytheville and 47 at Abingdon were each the coolest reported in August at those locations in 20 years.

Other reported low temperatures across the region on Wednesday morning include:

Grayson Highlands, 40
Copper Hill, 42
Galax, 44
Hot Springs, 43
Pulaski, 43
Apple Orchard Mountain, 44
Bald Knob (Mountain Lake), 45
Pearisburg, 45
Radford, 45
Blacksburg, 46
Gathright Dam, 46
Pennington Gap, 46
Richlands, 46
Christiansburg, 47
Covington, 47
Saltville, 47
Meadows of Dan, 49
Rocky Mount, 49
Martinsville, 51
Stuart, 51
Appomattox, 53
Brookneal, 53
Danville, 56
John H. Kerr Dam, 57
South Boston, 58

The photo above was Photo of the Week in this week’s weather newsletter. You can sign up for that newsletter here:

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.

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