ALERT For A Continuation Of Hazardous Road Conditions – Especially Secondary Routes Into Tuesday

Secondary roads remain snow covered and locally impassible, with more time being needed for VDOT work to be completed on these roadways.

ALERT For ALL Roads Tonight-Tuesday Morning With Refreezing And Black Ice

A sharp temperature drop tonight into Tuesday morning will create icy patches with refreezing. 

Air temperatures are expected to plunge into single digits and 10s, except locally colder in high mountain valleys at upper elevations where dry advection will be occurring to enhance cold air drainage over deep snow cover.

To see larger images, and a short time-lapse of the storm, reference the High Knob Landform and scroll down to the Major Winter Storm section.

Majestic orographic snow clouds capped the high country for both many miles and hours Monday morning, laying across heads of the Big Cherry Lake to High Knob Lake corridor ( as seen above ).  This was adding even more moisture to trees.

Storm snowfall totals ended up as expected within the lifting zones of the High Knob Massif where a general 1 to 2 feet of snow accumulated.

Totals varied from around a foot in Wise to 19″ at High Chaparral ( 3300 feet elevation ) to 2 feet or more in the main crest zone of the massif.

This included the Scott County side where air was rising up toward the High Knob Massif, with a foot or more of snow reported from Natural Tunnel State Park and Duffield to Castlewood & Abingdon downstream of the massif. 

One of the most dramatic short-distance contrasts observed anywhere with this storm occurred as air flowed across the High Knob Massif and through an orographic standing wave to subside and warm amid lee-ward ( downslope ) locales from Powell Valley to Big Stone Gap and Pennington Gap.

Air flow trajectories in the 900 to 600 mb layer were streaming across Scott County and through the wave standing along the High Knob Massif.

Snowfall was enhanced on the rising air side and diminished along and downstream of the subsidence, or sinking, air side of the massif.

This event, and many past storm events, revealed a transition zone of mixed precipitation that became orographically anchored along the lee-ward side where warmer air was being forced to sink as colder air ( on the rising side ) was being lifted upward over the high country ( a Thermally Indirect Circulation ).

This is more than just a mountain-valley phenomenon as this and many past events demonstrate, with significantly less snow depth & total precipitation at high elevations in adjacent Black Mountain.

*More than 2.00″ of water equivalent in the High Knob Massif during this event was 1.00″ or more above what was reported on Black Mountain.