Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal taking a long break
• Yes, there's still an Atlantic tropical season going on
• Freezing temperatures likely tonight

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.

Weather unlikely to keep its cool

We had a nice rain Friday and a couple of really cool mornings over the weekend.

Surely, that means fall-like weather is setting in for the season, right?

Don't bet on it.

The long-term prognosis remains the same: Hot and dry. Or, at least, unseasonably warm and dry.

The combination of Hurricane Humberto's remnants and a cold front from the upper reaches of Canada succeeded in breaking through the persistent dryness and heat over the weekend.

But the overall atmospheric picture over the United States hasn't really changed that much. Indications are that a hot dome of high pressure will rebuild over us from the west during the next several days, possibly lasting into October.

What is considered "hot" changes with the calendar. The days are getting shorter and the sun angle is lessening, so the available solar heat drops with each day.

Normal temperatures really begin to trail off in the second half of September. In mid-September, the normal high for Roanoke is in the upper 70s, the normal low in the upper 50s. By the end of the month, that falls into the lower 70s and lower 50s.

It appears that high temperatures in the 80s will become commonplace by late this week. If that kind of warmth hangs on, it will be several degrees above normal for many days this month, whether or not there is an infrequent late-September 90-degree day or two thrown in the mix.

A weekend of much-below-normal temperatures has dropped Roanoke's September average temperature to 72.5 degrees, through Monday. Several days of above-normal temperatures to end the month raise the specter of boosting that average back to where this becomes the warmest September on record. The record is 73.6 degrees set in 1998.

If we get in an extremely dry air mass, we may set into a pattern where daytime highs are higher than normal but nighttime lows are near normal or even below normal.

Both heating and cooling of the air is much quicker in a dry air mass, and with longer nights, there is even more opportunity to cool. That could offset the highs enough to keep us out of record territory.

That it will be drier than normal seems an even surer bet than it being a record warm month.

Last week's rains have eased some of the short-term dryness, but long-term, over months and years, the Southeast and mid-Atlantic are still very dry.

There just doesn't seem to be a mechanism available to trigger the kind of repeated, general rains we'll need to really reverse the drought.

Cold fronts that move through from time to time will be working with limited moisture. The subtropical jet stream shows no signs of becoming active in bringing Pacific storms across the southern U.S.

And right now, at the peak of Atlantic hurricane season, there are no new tropical systems with any promise to deliver needed rains -- though as Hurricane Humberto showed last week, that could change in a short time.

So don't expect a lot of crisp, fall mornings in the next couple of weeks, anyway. Warm and dry days are the trend.

We'll start to see some fall colors, but some of those leaves may be turning yellow and brown simply because it is too dry.