Nothing Special

By Russell Russ

The month of May brought with it the final transition into summertime weather. May always holds the threat of one last parting shot of winter weather. That was not the case this year. There were no real cold temperatures and there was no snowfall. It was not a bad weather month, but it could not really be described as being all that nice either. There were numerous cloudy days, frequent days with rain and not many warm sunny days. Memorial Day turned out to be pretty nice weather-wise, always a good thing for the local parade and road race.

May’s low temperature of 34 degrees was observed on May 7 and the high of 84 degrees was observed on May 27. No temperature records were set this month, but we did come within three or four degrees of record temperatures on three days. With an average monthly temperature of 55.4 degrees, it was 0.7 degree above normal. May of last year had seven days with spotty frost, but this year there was no frost at the weather station and perhaps just a couple of days with spotty frost in some normally colder locations. The extended cool spring and seemingly cool and cloudy May resulted in a slight delay in the normal leaf-out and flowering period.

The total precipitation recorded for the month was 5.30 inches, 0.96 inch above normal. There were three thunderstorms observed this month, but nothing on the severe side. There was no snowfall. May’s average snowfall amount is just 0.4 inch.
For 2014, January through May, our total precipitation amount is 20.93 inches. This is just 0.02 inch above normal. For snowfall we are 1.5 inches below normal. You certainly could say that for the time being, 2014 has been fairly average as far as precipitation goes.

Weather observations are recorded by the Great Mountain Forest Corporation at Norfolk’s National Weather Service Cooperative Weather Observer Station, Norfolk 2 SW.