In fact, it is quite diverse. According to the Virginia State Climatology Office, the state has five different climate areas--the Tidewater, Piedmont, Northern Virginia, Western Mountain and Southwestern Mountain regions. Temperatures can range from moderate in areas such as Charlottesville, Warrenton and Lynchburg to bitter cold in the northern Blue Ridge. Rainfall averages vary from a low of 33 inches in the Shenandoah Valley to more than 60 inches in Virginia’s southwestern mountains. (Source: Virginia State Climatology Office.)

You can credit three factors: the Atlantic Ocean and its warm Gulf Stream; the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountain systems; and the Commonwealth’s odd waterways--rivers that run north, south, east and west--with the state’s diverse weather. The northeast trajectory of storms that reach the coast occurs because the air over cold land hits the warm Gulf Stream and parallels the coast and the jet stream. The driest areas of the state are the Shenandoah and New River valleys because they are trapped between the two mountain chains. Moist air coming from either west or east drops on the far slopes before it reaches those valleys.

In addition to flowing over mountains and into valleys, air also flows up river valleys in Virginia, so depending on which way a river flows, weather patterns change. For example, in far southwestern Virginia, the Holston River drains south into North Carolina and Tennessee. A flow of air from the south would move up the river’s drainage area and rain would increase up river at higher elevations. And we wonder why the weather people can’t get it right.

But weather prediction was even an avocation for our founding fathers. James Madison may have been the Commonwealth’s earliest weatherman. At the request of Thomas Jefferson, Madison jotted down more than 16,000 weather observations at his Montpelier plantation over an 18-year-period between 1784 and 1802. Slightly 200 years later, in 2003, researchers from the University of Virginia and the University of Arkansas used those observations to determine that spring rains came a month earlier--in May, rather than June--in the colonial period in central Virginia. To determine these historical weather conditions they matched Madison’s notes to the width of growth rings on original oaks on his property. Wider rings usually mean more precipitation. “These were guys who lived the ideals of the enlightenment,” said one of the researchers in a March 27, 2003 article in UVA’s student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. Jefferson’s and Madison’s records met the highest scientific standards of the time, he added.

While Madison’s observations documented the more mundane day-to-day weather changes, Virginia does experience its share of weather extremes. Take hurricanes, for example. The Virginia Department of Emergency Management reports that since 1871, 123 hurricanes or tropical storms have hit Virginia at a cost of 228 lives. One of the earliest recorded hurricanes occurred on September 6, 1667. It is reported that the Chesapeake Bay rose 12 feet and the storm caused the widening of the coastal Lynnhaven River near present day Virginia Beach. The hurricane that caused the most damage was Camille in 1969. It dropped 31 inches of rain in just 12 hours south of Charlottesville. Mud slides and flash flooding resulted, killing at least 153 people, the majority in Nelson County. More than 100 bridges were washed out in the area, as well.

Hurricanes Hurricanes often spawn tornadoes. In 1979 Hurricane David spawned the most –eight in Virginia alone. Tornadoes can also develop from thunderstorms. According to the Southeast Regional Climate Center, Virginia experiences an average of seven tornadoes per year with an average of one death and 10 injuries. The most tornadoes – 28 – occurred in 1993. The worst tornado dates from May 2, 1929 when a tornado struck Rye Cove in Scott County, killing 13 people. A more recent tornado in 1993 killed 4 and injured 238 in Petersburg. Winds were estimated at 225 mph in the downtown area. (See Tornadoes of Virginia.)

The Commonwealth has experienced other weather extremes as well. The highest temperature ever recorded was 110° F. in Balcony Falls in Rockbridge County on July 15, 1954; the lowest is -30° F on January 21, 1985, at the Mountain Lake Biological Station near Blacksburg. Big Meadows, along the Skyline Drive, holds the record for the greatest snowfall during a single storm: 48 inches fell January 6-7, 1996. The most snow to fall in a month occurred in Warrenton in February 1899, when fifty-four inches fell. (See Virginia Extremes.)

And Virginia shares one extremely odd weather phenomenon with only one other place in the world. Peter's Mountain, which straddles the Virginia/West Virginia border in Alleghany County, is known throughout the world by meteorologists. In the spring, when conditions are right, a great roaring wind is heard, described by one as "a tremendous thundering roar of giant waves breaking over rocky reefs." The phenomena occurs in only one other location -- on the island of Penang, off the Malay Peninsula.