Charlottesville, Virginia to Oxnard, California

Ryan Henning Leave a comment

After a couple of road trips that were merely one day long, we’re hitting the big time, with this 5 day trip across the country. We’ll cover 2,604 miles at a pace of 66.8mph, which means the we will cover 534 miles a day for the first four days of the trek, with the last day being a hair shorter. What a terrific way to get a look at the nation’s weather this week.

DAY ONE (Wednesday)

Charlottesville, Virginia


Wouldn’t it be nice if we got off on the right foot, with clear skies and dry roads to set our pace by. Well, it won’t happen. Low pressure hemmed in by the remnants of Arthur will be raining over the central and southern Appalachians. The heaviest will fall from Roanoke to Knoxville, but lighter rain is going to continue west to Nashville, where we will stop on the eastern fringes of town.

DAY TWO (Thursday)
There isn’t a lot going on specifically over the Mississippi Valley for Tuesday, but it will be enjoying the ramifications of some of the activity elsewhere. Streaks of overcast with drizzle will continue through western Tennessee. After a bit of quiet weather in eastern Arkansas, flow will become southerly in response to another area of low pressure in the Canadian high plains. This may trigger a few thunderstorms from Little Rock west into eastern Oklahoma. We’ll make it to the Robert S Kerr Reservoir, where storm coverage would probably just be increasing through the night.

DAY THREE (Friday)
The showers and storms will probably continue through the night in eastern Oklahoma. If we use a mobile radar app, we’ll see a little bit of gumption would have taken us to Oklahoma City, the night before which will be a lot dryer on Friday. Instead, we’ll drive through a few more showers until we get clear air from western Oklahoma to the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico, where we will stop just past Tucumcari.

DAY FOUR (Saturday)
Finally, after being pushed and pulled by features near and far, things are going to look up as we move through the Desert Southwest. New Mexico and Arizona look to be devoid of any troubling features and even the heat will be pretty manageable. The day will end in Ash Fork, Arizona.

DAY FIVE (Sunday)
Come on. You’ve just spent all this time navigating the country, dealing with scattered showers and thunderstorms, and the monotony of I-40 west of the Mississippi. You deserve to coast to the Coast in Oxnard in peace, and you are going to get it. Enjoy Oxnard.

Oxnard
Oxnard, California

Rochester, New York to Charlottesville, Virginia

Ryan Henning Leave a comment

We have a long one day drive through the mountains of Appalachia. In the spring time, after a bit of rain, I expect a verdant, gorgeous drive through the Finger Lakes and the Appalachians of Pennsylvania and both varieties of Virginia. We’ll cover about 62 miles per hour until we reach our destination 497 miles away.

Rochester, New York

A fairly amorphous blob of low pressure sits in the Ohio Valley, bringing some serious rainfall just west of the Rockies, however this feature is deteriorating and won’t actually interfere with the first couple of states in our journey. The interesting part, to me anyways, is why the system in the Great Lakes is falling apart. Tropical Storm Arthur, which sits off the mid-Atlantic coast and is cycling in dry air into western New York and Pennsylvania. The precipitation west of the Appalachians will squirt through south of Arthur’s field of influence, and that will lead to some wet roadways as we reach the Hagerstown, Maryland area. Scattered showers and maybe an isolated thunderstorm will be possible for the rest of our drive, but fortunately, much of it is in the shadow of the mountains, and rain won’t be as heavy as it could be, at least not until we turn east from Staunton to Charlottesville. Darn.

Charlottesville, Virginia