Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal remains on break
• Coastal low prompts Southwest Virginia flooding
• Hurricane Ida: Something extraordinary may be happening

About Kevin

Kevin Myatt grew up in Arkansas to the tune of tornado sirens and the rhythm of hailstones, aspiring to be a meteorologist before his studies and career were turned to journalism instead. Though he often chases storms, he prefers living in the cooler, more tranquil weather of the Blue Ridge. He moved to Roanoke in 1999 to take a job on the copy desk of The Roanoke Times; writing headlines and editing copy is his principal work for the newspaper today.

Each May, Kevin assists Pulaski County High School / Virginia Tech meteorology instructor Dave Carroll in leading college and high school students to the Plains to observe severe weather firsthand. The accounts of many of his storm chases can be found here on the storm chasing page of his weather blog on roanoke.com.

Kevin was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States," a book written by D.C.-area weather enthusiast Rick Schwartz and published by Blue Diamond Books that documents hurricanes striking the mid-Atlantic states since colonial times.

The Weather Journal column began in 2003 and appears on Friday's Virginia section front in The Roanoke Times. The Weather Journal blog began in 2006 and follows weather day-by-day between the larger columns.

April turns from cold to 'normal' route

As weird as it may seem after so many days of blustery winds and snow flurries earlier in the month, April suddenly looks like it will go down in the record book as a "normal" month in temperature.

A run of warm weather this week has helped bring April's average temperature, once many degrees below normal, back within 1.4 degrees of normal, based on Roanoke Regional Airport observations.

The April average temperature through the first 26 days was 54.2 degrees after hanging in the upper 40s for nearly half the month.

Temperatures near to slightly above normal through the month's remaining few days will likely bring April's average a little closer to normal. April may well end up closer to normal in average temperature than any month since June, which was just three-tenths of a degree above normal.

You may have heard that "normal" is only the average of extremes, and this month is certainly proving that.

Between April 5 and 16, 11 of 12 days were below normal. On April 7, we didn't even get out of the 30s, and many areas saw at least a dusting of snow.

Each day between April 21 and 26 was above normal in temperature, capped by a high of 88 on Wednesday, which was just one degree short of a record high.

So in a little less than three weeks, we went from a high temperature several degrees colder than what is typical for January to one similar to late July.

When the Arctic outbreak overspread the country in early April, it was like hitting a reset button on spring.

In March, it appeared we might be on a headlong rush to an early summer. A large dome of hot air covered much of the country, and toward the end of March there was a severe weather outbreak stretching almost the length of the Plains from Texas to the Dakotas.

The pattern was more like early June than late March. Then January came back upon us. The Arctic outbreak was very costly for agricultural interests throughout much of the central and eastern U.S. It also temporarily swept the sultry, stormy weather common in much of the U.S. during spring back out over the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, it's almost like we have recovered back to a typical late March or early April with a very wavy jet stream pattern focused a bit more to the south than we often see this time of year.

The deadly tornado on the Texas-Mexico border on Tuesday certainly isn't an unheard-of event, but it was a bit farther south than we would typically expect this time of year. Cool and warm air masses have continued to collide along the jet stream very far to the south.

It looks like we have some pretty calm days coming up, as a large high-pressure system builds in much of the central and eastern United States.

May looks to start warm and dry, but it too could well end up a month of variability as strong winds aloft over the Pacific crash into North America and jumble the weather pattern around from time to time.

An unsettled May would be quite normal.