Spring has not sprung, but perhaps winter has sprung a leak.
Nearly two weeks before the official first day of spring and just one week after a few snow flurries fell, the Lynchburg area has had two days with temperatures reaching 60 degrees. The National Weather Service predicted that the warmth would last through much of the week.
In downtown Lynchburg on Monday afternoon, exercisers paced up and down Monument Terrace. Other people took walks on Main Street or sat outside during their lunch breaks. Construction crews were back to working on sites that were covered in snow a month ago.
“It’s made a huge difference,” said Charlie Evans, vice president of Coleman-Adams Construction. “The last two weeks, between the temperature and sun and the wind, things are drying fast.”
The ground at Riverfront Festival Park on Jefferson Street dried enough that Coleman-Adams crews resumed work there last week. They could finish the project within a few weeks if warm, clear weather continues, Evans said.
Selling hot dogs at a mobile cart on Main Street, Ashley Layne was glad for the change in weather. “I was so excited. I can’t stand cold. I hate it,” Layne said.
Layne started working for Dave’s Dawgs last summer, and this winter was her first working outside. Because it also was one of the coldest and snowiest winters in Lynchburg, she sometimes had to work standing on ice and bundled up. “I had so many layers on, some days that I couldn’t even move or sit down,” she said.
The recent warmth has been good for sales, Layne said.
“We do a lot more business when it’s warm,” she said. “There’s not a lot of people that want to stand in 20-degree weather to wait for a hot dog. Even last week, it picked up a little bit, with the weather in the 50s.”
Cedrick Rose, owner of Quikwash Detailing on Commerce Street, said his business was getting a lot more traffic. By noon on Monday, he had washed four vehicles. The business had washed only two cars all day on Monday last week, when the high temperature was 51 degrees and snow was forecast for the next day, he said.
People are much less likely to have their cars detailed when rain or snow are in the forecast, especially because of the effect that salt on the roads has on cars, Rose said.
The winter “set me back a little bit, but when the sun came out, business picked up,” he said.
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