New River Gorge's 2023 weather: a very warm winter, a dry fall

NPS photo.

2023 was the 7th-warmest year on record around New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, and a little drier than usual — the 44th driest since records began in 1895. The Park Service's Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network tracks weather as one of the park's "vital signs", using county data for Fayette, Raleigh and Summers counties in West Virginia.

Weather is not climate

Weather is what is happening outside now, from minutes to months: rain, snow, a warm afternoon. Climate is what to expect, judged from thirty years or more. Climate is a hot summer; weather is a warm, rainy Tuesday. The figures below set 2023's weather against the 1895–2022 climate.

A warm winter

Where 2023 and its seasons ranked among years since 1895. NPS.

The year averaged 53.9°F, 1.9°F above normal. Eight months were warmer than usual, and the winter was extraordinary: January ran 7.6°F above average and February 9.2°F. Late spring was the exception — May and June were cooler than normal.

A slightly dry year

Where 2023's precipitation ranked since 1895. NPS.

41.64 inches fell, 2.74 inches below average. March, June and the autumn were dry; February and July were wet.

The long view

Annual temperature and precipitation, 1895–2023, with trend lines. NPS.

Since 1895 the park's counties have warmed by about 0.05°F a decade and grown wetter by about 0.06 inches a decade. Park Service projections for 2100 are steeper: 2.9 to 8.6°F warmer, from best case to worst, with 6 to 11 percent more precipitation (Gonzalez and others, 2018).

Sources

Written from "2023 Weather in Review: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve", National Park Service Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network, a work of the United States government in the public domain. Data are from NOAA's Climate at a Glance and nClimDiv dataset.