Freezy day? Holiday weather could get icy, snowy

How the 1/10th of an inch January 8 snow looked downtown.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The National Weather Service has begun predicting a chance of rain, snow, and sleet after 1pm Monday, Martin Luther King Day. However, even on the morning of the predicted precipitation, the Service puts the chance of precipitation at just 40 percent. And even then the total daytime snow and sleet accumulation might be less than a half inch.

A few days ago, a reporter touched based with UVA climatologist Jerry Stenger to see how this winter was measuring up. It turns out that we're definitely not keeping up with last year. Of course, last winter was a record with total 2009-10 season snowfall measured at McCormick Observatory of 56.8 inches. That beat the old record of 54.7 inches in 1995-96. (The average is just 17.8 inches.)

So far this winter, Stenger says, we've had 3.5 inches total–- consisting of 3.4 inches  in December and just a tenth of an inch this month. He notes that the average through December is 3.5 inches with 8.2 inches by the end of January. So get out there and do the snow dance!