How 2020 ranks in history of Hampton Roads’ weather
It was an unprecedented year in Hampton Roads — but not so much when it comes to the weather.
Though the last five months of 2020 saw pretty heavy rain totals, nothing broke any records or even cracked the top five.
Total rainfall in Norfolk was 56.33 inches last year, according to the National Weather Service in Wakefield. That’s not even in the top 10 wettest years on record, though it is nearly 10 inches more than the 1981-2010 average.
The end of the year saw unusually high totals, though. November was the second-wettest of that month on record for Norfolk, with 7.64 inches, and the period from August to December as a whole — 30.23 inches — was the sixth-wettest.
Precipitation was even more notable in Williamsburg and the Richmond and Salisbury regions, with Richmond seeing its wettest August-to-December stretch “by a lot,” at more than 39 inches, the service said. Williamsburg recorded its second-highest annual rainfall with nearly 75.5 inches, compared to 75.65 in 1975.
Year to year, there’s a lot of variation with rainfall, so it’s hard to draw conclusions, said Larry Brown, senior forecaster and meteorologist with the Wakefield office. Norfolk’s wettest on record, for instance, was all the way back in 1889, at more than 70 inches. But weather officials have
noticed a slight upward trend in rainfall over the past 15 years, he said. The service’s data for Norfolk would indicate that 2020 was the warmest on record: the region’s main measurement site, the Norfolk International Airport, recorded its highest ever annual temperature.
But that’s not necessarily accurate, Brown said. A few years ago, the grass stopped being maintained around the sensor at the airport and the equipment is now surrounded by gravel. Compiling his year-end report released this week, Brown therefore also used data from the Norfolk Naval Air Station. For 2020, that station recorded an average temperature of 63.4 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 64 degrees at the Norfolk airport.
Norfolk’s hottest year on record — not counting the skewed metrics since 2017 — was 2012, with an average of 62.7 degrees. In general, the average temperature has been creeping up in the low 60s.