Home | Blog Index | Blog Archives | Christianity & Faith Essays | Storm Chasing Essays

Friday, December 7, 2007 - 4:31AM

Short burst of freezing rain

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

A little more than 20 minutes of light freezing rain was all Charleston saw early this morning. So light that I couldn't find any photo or video subjects to illustrate that it had happened, except for a few frozen raindrops on one of my handrails at the house.

As usual, my main concern this morning was with bridges and overpasses in the area. However, the precip was too light to cause any problems that I could see. This surface data plot shows Charleston currently the only station in the region reporting freezing rain (that's what the purple sideways 's' symbol with a dot on the inner left side means), with snow being reported to the north in Ohio (purple asterisks symbol) and rain to the southwest in Kentucky (purple dots symbol):

Despite the freezing 'sprinkles' falling outside, I'm back home now and done covering this string of winter weather events. Temperatures in the valley are already at 33°F, meaning that icy road problems, if there were any, should be over now. We're on a warming trend that should continue through the weekend, with temps reaching the 60s by Sunday. That means winter driving problems will be taking a break for a while here. That's good news for Kanawha Valley residents and commuters, and good news for me - my work is done and I finally can get some rest for a few days. After that, the focus will turn to potential flooding problems from a multi-day rain event next week, followed by snow and freezing temperatures possibly returning on Thursday and Friday.