Virginia Snow Predictions 2026-2027: What the Records Show

The National Weather Service publishes both figures for Richmond and Norfolk. It does not publish medians for the other stations, so those cells stay empty rather than get filled with arithmetic of our own.

What is the snowiest month in Virginia?

It depends on the city, and the split runs roughly north-west against south-east. January is snowiest in Richmond, Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Wallops Island. February edges it in Dulles, Roanoke and Lynchburg. Danville and Bristol are dead level between the two.

Station	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
Washington Dulles	0.3	2.8	6.9	7.0	3.9	0.1
Roanoke	0.1	3.2	4.3	4.8	2.3	0.1
Lynchburg	0.0	2.0	3.5	3.6	2.4	0.1
Bristol Tri-City	0.3	1.7	3.0	3.0	1.1	0.1
Richmond	0.0	1.8	3.7	2.2	1.1	0.0
Wallops Island	0.0	1.7	3.5	2.3	0.7	0.2
Danville	0.0	1.1	2.5	2.5	1.5	0.0
Norfolk	0.0	1.1	3.2	1.5	0.4	0.0
Virginia Beach (Oceana)	0.0	0.4	2.2	0.8	0.0	0.0

Inches, NOAA monthly normals 1991-2020. Each row sums to that station's seasonal total in the table above.

November is close to nothing statewide. April is a rounding error everywhere except Wallops Island, which posts 0.2 inches. March still matters in the west: Roanoke averages 2.3 inches in March, more than Norfolk gets in January.

What is the snowiest place in Virginia?

Wise, in the far south-west, at 47.1 inches a season. Burkes Garden in Tazewell County is second at 46.9. Both collect more than double what Washington Dulles gets, and neither appears in the airport-based tables that most websites reprint.

We pulled every Virginia station in NOAA's 1991-2020 normals to settle this. Of the 105 with a published snowfall figure, these are the ten deepest.

#	Station	Seasonal normal, 1991-2020
1	Wise 1SE	47.1 in
2	Burkes Garden	46.9 in
3	Mustoe 1 SW	39.1 in
4	Clintwood 1W	38.4 in
5	Nora 4 SSE	38.3 in
6	Mill Gap	33.7 in
7	Bland	26.9 in
8	Hot Springs	25.3 in
9	Star Tannery	25.1 in
10	Blacksburg NWSO	24.7 in

Compare that list against the city table higher up and the whole confusion explains itself. Virginia's familiar city numbers come from airport stations, which sit in valleys, near cities, at low elevation. The snowiest places in the state are small co-operative observer stations up in the mountains, and they never appear under a heading like "Virginia snowfall by city". Roanoke's airport reads 14.8 inches. Wise, further west and much higher, reads 47.1.

So both answers you see online are half right. Virginia averages under 10 inches in most of the places people live, and over 45 in the corner of the state almost nobody quotes.

One correction while we are here. A widely shared page puts Wise in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Wise County sits in the Cumberland Plateau, in the far south-west, nearer to Kentucky than to the Blue Ridge.

Elevation is not the only driver either. Dulles is at just 313 feet and still out-snows Roanoke's airport, because how far north and how far from the ocean you are counts too.

How much snow does Charlottesville get?

There is no official figure, which is not the answer anyone wants. Charlottesville Airport and Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park both sit in NOAA's 1991-2020 Climate Normals with the snowfall value left blank. Numbers circulate for both, but none of them is a published 30-year normal.

Blacksburg shows why this matters. Its airport station has no snowfall normal either, but the Weather Service office station nearby does, and it reads 24.7 inches. Same town, one number published and one not. When a page tells you what a Virginia town averages, the station it picked is doing most of the work.

Virginia snow predictions for winter 2026-2027

No agency forecasts a Virginia snowfall total for 2026-27, because none can. What is close to settled is El Niño. On 9 July 2026 the Climate Prediction Center put it at 100 percent for December through February, with an 81 percent chance it runs "very strong" from October to December.

That far-out call is possible only because ocean temperatures move slowly. Snowfall does not.

What CPC will not do is turn that into a snow total. Its seasonal outlooks cover temperature and total precipitation in three-month blocks, as shifts in the odds. NOAA states the reason plainly: the outlook does not project seasonal snowfall because snow forecasts are "generally not predictable more than a week in advance."

Claim you will see	What the source actually supports
"Virginia will get X inches this winter"	No agency forecasts seasonal snowfall. CPC says it is not predictable beyond about a week.
"El Niño means a snowy Virginia"	Composites tilt the odds snowier in the Mid-Atlantic. NOAA calls composites retrospectives, "not a forecast."
"The almanac predicts a cold, snowy winter"	Audited against five winters, almanac skill was indistinguishable from random guessing.
"Forecasters expect a big storm in January"	Deterministic forecasting breaks down at roughly 10 to 14 days. No named month is forecastable in July.

The almanacs have actually been audited. The Colorado Climate Center, run by that state's climatologist, scored the Farmers' Almanac against the Climate Prediction Center across five winters from 2019 to 2024. The almanac scored +1. CPC scored +24. Its conclusion was that almanac winter forecasts could not be told apart from picking at random.

Even CPC's own precipitation outlooks beat random chance only modestly. Honest seasonal forecasting nudges odds, it does not predict outcomes. We pull that apart properly in our look at how almanac forecasts stack up against the actual science.

The Old Farmer's Almanac had not published its detailed Virginia forecast for 2026-27 when we checked on 20 July 2026. Those usually appear in late August or September, and we will update this page when it does.

Does El Niño mean more snow in Virginia?

It tilts the odds, and the signal is weaker than almost everyone claims. NOAA's composites of El Niño winters from 1950 to 2009 do show snowier-than-average conditions across the Mid-Atlantic and southern Appalachians, but NOAA warns the sample runs to only about 20 events.

The sharper finding comes from the National Weather Service office at Baltimore/Washington, which serves Northern Virginia. Its own analysis concludes local snowfall depends more on the North Atlantic Oscillation than on El Niño or La Niña. Above-normal snow winters cluster where the NAO was neutral to negative, whatever ENSO was doing. Since 1950, only one above-normal snow winter occurred under a moderate or strong La Niña, and only one under a positive NAO.

The record 2009-10 winter at Dulles, 73.2 inches, came from a moderate El Niño and a strongly negative NAO together. Not El Niño alone.

Here is why that matters in July. The NAO cannot be predicted months ahead. So the one driver we can see coming is the one that does not decide Virginia's winter, and the one that does decide it stays invisible until about a fortnight out.

Virginia is not alone in this. The same limitation applies to every state we cover, including our Maryland snowfall records and outlook just across the Potomac.

What was the biggest snowstorm in Virginia history?

The largest storm total in Virginia's observational record is 49 inches at Big Meadows, in Shenandoah National Park, over 6 to 8 January 1996. Thirty-two of those inches fell on 7 January alone. Down in the cities the same blizzard was far smaller, and Richmond's own biggest event remains 21.6 inches from January 1940.

We took the Big Meadows figure from the station's daily observations rather than from another website: 16.0 inches on the 6th, 32.0 on the 7th, 1.0 on the 8th. One caveat we will not hide, 5 January is marked missing in that record, so the true storm total may be a little higher still.

That single day of 32.0 inches is worth sitting with. It is more snow in 24 hours than Roanoke, Richmond, Norfolk and Virginia Beach get in an average year put together.

Among the long-running city stations, Richmond's snowiest day is 19.9 inches on 24 January 1940, a record now 85 years old, and Norfolk's biggest event is 18.6 inches on 27-28 December 1892.

Record	Richmond	Norfolk	Washington Dulles
Snowiest season	38.9 in (1961-62)	41.9 in (1979-80)	73.2 in (2009-10)
Biggest single storm	21.6 in (Jan 1940)	18.6 in (Dec 1892)	32.4 in (Feb 2010)
Biggest single day	19.9 in (24 Jan 1940)	17.5 in (27 Dec 1892)	19.8 in (7 Jan 1996)

The named storms most Virginians remember:

• Blizzard of January 1996. Dulles measured 24.6 inches over 6-8 January, with 19.8 of it on the 7th.
• Snowmageddon, February 2010. Dulles took 32.4 inches over 5-6 February, its highest two-day total on record. February 2010 finished at 46.1 inches, the snowiest single month Dulles has ever recorded.
• Winter Storm Jonas, January 2016. Dulles 29.3 inches over 22-23 January. In eastern Virginia the biggest confirmed report was 19.0 inches at Biltmore in Henrico County, while Norfolk took 1.9.
• The I-95 storm, January 2022. The maximum was 13.4 inches at Gordonsville in Louisa County. Richmond city reported 3.0 to 3.5 inches. That was enough to close I-95 near Fredericksburg with drivers stranded over 24 hours and knock out power to nearly 450,000 customers.

That last one is the most useful storm on the list, because it is the smallest. Thirteen inches at its worst, nowhere near a record, and it still shut a stretch of I-95 for a day. In Virginia the storm that disrupts your trip is rarely the historic one.

Why does Virginia close schools and roads for two inches of snow?

Because two or three snow days a year does not pay for a northern state's plow fleet, and the arithmetic is not close. Richmond gets an inch or more of snow on 2.7 days in an average year. Norfolk manages 1.7.

A city buying plows and stockpiling salt for that is buying kit that sits idle 363 days out of 365, paid for by residents who would rather the money went somewhere they can see it.

So Virginia takes the trade knowingly: fewer plows, and the roads go bad when it snows. January 2022 is what that looks like when a storm lands on the wrong stretch of interstate at the wrong hour. Just over 13 inches at its heaviest, and I-95 became impassable for a day.

If you are moving to Virginia from further north, this is the adjustment. It is not that Virginia handles snow badly by accident. It is that clearing snow properly costs more than the snow costs.

Where can you see snow in Virginia?

North and west, and the data says so bluntly. Dulles at 21.0 inches gets six times what Virginia Beach gets at 3.4, with Roanoke at 14.8 and Lynchburg at 11.6 in between. If snow is the point of the trip, aim at the Blue Ridge or the south-west, in January or February.

Two practical warnings before you drive.

First, Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park closes in winter weather, and a serious storm can shut all 105 miles of it for days. Check the park's road status page the morning you travel, not the night before. Park entrances that are not on Skyline Drive generally stay open when the Drive itself is closed, so a closure notice does not always mean the park is shut.

Second, do not plan a trip around a forecast issued more than about a week out. Everything above this section explains why. Watch the seven-day forecast, and keep the plan loose.

Where can you ski in Virginia?

Four resorts: Wintergreen in Nelson County, Massanutten near Harrisonburg, Bryce in Shenandoah County, and the Omni Homestead at Hot Springs. Wintergreen is the largest. All four sit in the Blue Ridge or Allegheny mountains, in the snowiest quarter of the state.

The thing worth knowing before you book is that Virginia skiing runs on snowmaking, not weather. Look at the 2022-23 row in the table above: Dulles managed 0.4 inches for the entire season, Roanoke 0.4. A resort waiting on natural snow would not have opened. Wintergreen runs several hundred snowguns for exactly this reason.

So the ski season here is far more reliable than Virginia's snowfall record suggests, and it depends on cold nights rather than snowy days. Check each resort's own site for opening and closing dates, which move every year with the temperature.

Sources

• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, US Climate Normals 1991-2020, annual/seasonal and monthly snowfall normals for all 452 Virginia stations. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Wakefield, Richmond snowfall records and top-10 lists, and the same for Norfolk. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Baltimore/Washington, Dulles season-by-season snowfall, 1962-63 to 2025-26. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Wakefield, all-time record snowfall events. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Baltimore/Washington, "Snowfall and Cold" historic storm summaries. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Wakefield event summaries for 23 January 2016 and 3 January 2022. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Wakefield winter storm summaries for 8 December 2025, 25 January 2026, 31 January 2026 and 22-23 February 2026. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NOAA Climate Prediction Center, ENSO Diagnostic Discussion issued 9 July 2026, and its seasonal outlook issued 16 July 2026. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NOAA Climate.gov on why the winter outlook does not project seasonal snowfall. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• NWS Baltimore/Washington, "ENSO and NAO vs. Local Winter Snowfall". Accessed 20 July 2026.
• Colorado Climate Center, "Should you use the Farmers' Almanac winter forecast?", 23 August 2024. Accessed 20 July 2026.
• Applied Climate Information System (NOAA Regional Climate Centers), daily and monthly station observations, used for the last five seasons and the Big Meadows totals of January 1996. Accessed 20 July 2026.

Researched and drafted with AI assistance, then fact-checked against the NOAA and National Weather Service sources listed above on 20 July 2026. Every snowfall figure on this page was read from a NOAA or NWS publication, not from a secondary weather site. Where a number is not published, we have said so rather than estimate it. We have not taken our own snow measurements in Virginia.