April 2024: A look back at last month’s weather
Your StormTracker 59 team goes back into the weather files to highlight some of the most impactful weather of the month:
April 2nd Fayette County Tornado
On April 2nd at 4:30 PM, an EF-2 tornado with maximum winds of 130 mph was on the ground for a little over a mile in Fayette County just southeast of the community of Hico.
New details emerge on EF-2 Fayette County tornado
The tornado was the strongest tornado recorded in West Virginia since September 2010, when an EF-3 tornado took place in Wood County.
Severe Weather Awareness Week: Tornadoes and Tornado Drill
The supercell thunderstorm that produced the Hico EF-2 tornado also dropped large hail and produced damaging wind gusts throughout north-central Fayette County as it raced through the county between 4:15 PM and 4:45 PM before weakening later in Nicholas County.
Is West Virginia actually safe from tornados?
This tornado was part of a volatile setup that produce ten tornadoes on April 2nd in West Virginia. That is the most tornadoes that has ever occurred in a single day in West Virginia history. With ten tornadoes so far in 2024, that nearly matches the eleven seen in 2014 as the most tornadoes we’ve had in the Mountain State in this millennium in West Virginia.
April 8th Solar Eclipse
April 8th featured a solar eclipse that was visible for many across the central, southern and northeastern U.S. Though our area was not in the path of totality, we were about 90% there!
Missed the solar eclipse? Here’s your next chance to see totality
Meteorologist Bradley Wells traveled up to New York to experience the solar eclipse in totality – he featured a livestream of the eclipse as it occurred! Many of you took photos of the eclipse in our region – you can see some of those in our slideshow of Weather Together photos below!
Temperatures in April
April 2024 was historically warm! We reached an incredible 83 degrees on April 28th – only four degrees off of the all-time record high temperature for the month of April in Beckley.
For the month of April, we were 2.7 degrees above normal. We began the month on a very warm note for a couple of days before a cold snap at the end of the first week brought several days of below average temperatures to the region after a nasty bout of severe weather. We warmed back up on April 8th and was either near or above average all the way into the 20th of April, when another bout of cold air rushed in. We ended the month on a very warm note, with highs peaking at 83 degrees on April 28th.
April 2024 was the seventh warmest April on record for the city of Beckley – we missed out on 4th place by merely 0.2 degrees! Five of the top seven warmest months in April history have occurred since 2010.
Warmest High Temperature: 83 degrees (April 28th)
Coolest High Temperature: 39 degrees (April 5th)
Coolest Low Temperature: 27 degrees (April 7th)
Warmest Low Temperature: 59 degrees (April 15th & April 17th)
Precipitation in April
Most of our region featured above average rainfall during the month of April. A large chunk of this rainfall occurred on April 3rd, which produced quite a bit of flooding just north and west of our region. The second half of the month of April produced much less precipitation, and our far southern counties were below normal for the month.
Wettest Day: 0.70″ (April 3rd)
Full Moon – Pink Moon
April’s full moon featured the Pink Moon on April 23rd. We received a lot of great shots of the moon this month thanks to mostly clear skies. You can see that in the Weather Together slideshow below!
April 2024 Weather in Photos with #WeatherTogether
What is #WeatherTogether?
Launched in 2022, #WeatherTogether is a dedicated community photo album hosted by 59News and StormTracker 59 to allow viewers to submit weather photos directly to us that we can share on all our platforms on-air or online. These photos are also showcased in our web-based photo album on our site for all to see and enjoy! Any photo of interesting weather, storm damage, snowfall, pets playing in puddles or snow and the likes are all welcomed! We hope to use this to showcase the beauty of the two Virginias through the eyes of our viewers and the vastly dynamic weather we see because we think there is no place more beautiful than here.
See for yourself the collection of photos already submitted or submit a few of your own, here.
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