The big news at the moment appears to be Hurricane Earl, a category four monster that is expected to hit or at least deliver a glancing blow to the East Coast before the week’s end.
As far as hurricanes go, Earl appears to be the real deal with winds of 135 mph. It’s expected to remain over open water before turning north by the week’s end that would allow the storm to make contact with parts of the East Coast, including the coastal region of North Carolina.
If you are wondering, forecasters say the big storm should have little or no impact on the coalfields of southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia. We checked with a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg, Va., who told reporter Katy Coil that we shouldn’t see any rain or high winds associated with Earl in Bluefield, Princeton, Tazewell, Welch or anywhere else for that matter. However, the storm could actually push temperatures up a few additional degrees this week.
That means we could actually hit 90 in Bluefield today or Thursday. It’s not that unusual for Bluefield to hit 90 in early September. It’s happened before, and will most certainly happen again — maybe even today.
According to Jackson, as Earl gets closer to the coast, Nature’s Air-Conditioned City will actually have a better chance of hitting 90, especially on Thursday. He spoke of a “smokestack effect” caused by the hurricane that could push temperatures up in Bluefield between two to four degrees higher than normal.
Jackson went on to tell Katy that the National Weather Service is currently predicting an Indian summer for the Bluefield area, with temperatures staying warm through mid-September. That sounds fine to me. I’ll take the warm weather, and the heat, as long as we can hold on to it. The longer we can hold on to the warm air — and the extreme heat for that matter — the longer we can hold on to summer.
I hope the meteorologist Katy spoke to is correct. We need a warm September, a warm October and a mild November and December — who knows? Memories of the so-called Dec. 18, 2009, monster storm are still fresh in the minds of many across our region.
Already, there are signs of fall across our region. It’s getting darker earlier each evening. Children are back in school. Gone is the daylight that allowed me to walk outside at 8:30 p.m. in the evening each night. In its place is darkness, and the realization that the evening exercise must now move indoors, or to the gym.
The Appy League season has ended, and the boys of summer are heading home. In the case of the Bluefield Orioles, they won’t be returning. Baseball has given way to football. In fact, we are now entering the second week of high school gridiron action. The college football season kickoffs this weekend with a big game in Morgantown. These are all signs of fall.
The big Labor Day weekend — the last big holiday weekend of the summer — is just upon us. While the long Labor Day weekend normally marks the official start of election season in our region, the election for all practical purposes got off to an early start in West Virginia with last Saturday’s special primary contest for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Robert C. Byrd. We now know that Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin will square off this November against Republican John Raese and Mountain Party candidate Jesse Johnson. It should be an interesting match up this November.
However, I’m in no rush for November to get here. The election can wait. I prefer to hold on to the warm, summer-like weather.
No one really knows at this point if we will have another rough winter or not. But we did go from one extreme to the next — extreme cold and snow to extreme heat. So some are already speculating that we could bypass fall altogether and continue with the warmer temperatures before falling back into another pattern of extreme cold. Let’s hope that won’t be the case this year.
Hopefully, the prediction from the forecasters in Blacksburg of a warmer than normal fall and winter will prove to be correct.
For now, we’ll continue to keep a close eye on Earl. While we are afforded a natural protection from such tropical storms by living in the mountains, the remnants of such tropical depressions can still make their way into our region — normally in the form of rain, and sometimes heavy rain. And sometimes we actually get some strong winds.
Remember Hurricane Hugo? I do. I was still a student at Concord College (now University) at the time. The remnants of Hugo knocked down trees and power lines across Athens and the western end of Mercer County. We also had some pretty powerful winds blow across the Campus Beautiful. It was certainly an experience that I remember to this very day.
When most folks talk about their favorite college memories, a hurricane is usually not at the top of their list. However, Hugo was hands down one of my favorite Concord memories. Maybe that’s why I still get excited about such big storms — even when there is little to no chance of them reaching our area. Of course, they said the same thing about Hugo. But the remnants of the big storm did blow into Mercer County, and with little or no advance warning from the National Weather Service.
Charles Owens is the Daily Telegraph’s city editor. Contact him at cowens@bdtonline.com.
Columns
September 1, 2010
Forecast for fall: Memories of Hugo linger as Earl makes his approach
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