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.

Storms have already made history

Historically, this weekend is about the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, the average time of the year when the tropics are the busiest with tropical storms and hurricanes.

The National Hurricane Center has been watching two systems -- a tropical depression over the northeast Gulf of Mexico, and a circulation in the central Atlantic several hundred miles east of Bermuda.

On Friday evening, the tropical depression made landfall in the Florida Panhandle without strengthening into a tropical storm. The depression, though, may bring some more needed rain to drought-stricken areas of the Southeast.

But the storm's failure to strengthen prevented some wind, wave and flood damage.

Being in a drought doesn't mean there can't be flash floods if the rain falls too hard and too fast. Dry soils can help soak up a lot of moisture and reduce large-scale river flooding, but any creek or river can go from a trickle to a torrent in minutes or hours if several inches of rain fall suddenly.

Presently, it doesn't look like Southwest Virginia will get much rain out of the tropical system, as it appears likely to continue drifting west into Louisiana.

Reaching the peak weekend of the tropical season is a good time to take stock of where it stands and how it compares with preseason forecasts.

The 2007 Atlantic tropical season is already a historic one in at least a couple of ways.

It is the only season on record when two hurricanes have reached landfall at Category 5 strength. Hurricanes Dean and Felix each made landfall with winds exceeding 155 mph.

Neither made landfall anywhere near the U.S., so Americans might easily forget that feat. But it will not be so easily forgotten by the folks in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula near Dean's strike point or the isolated villagers in northeast Nicaragua where Felix came ashore.

The 2007 Atlantic tropical season also produced a remarkable storm Sept. 12-13 when Humberto exploded from a disorganized mass of clouds to a Category 1 hurricane in less than 18 hours before coming ashore in eastern Texas. No Atlantic tropical cyclone had ever intensified that quickly near landfall.

Through early Friday, there have been nine named storms, three hurricanes and two major hurricanes (winds at least 130 mph). The first named storm was Subtropical Storm Andrea, so technically there have been eight systems to reach at least tropical storm status.

The National Hurricane Center's last forecast to start August called for 13 to 16 named storms, seven to nine hurricanes and three to five major hurricanes. Similarly, the last forecast from the Colorado State University team was for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

Those forecasts are looking pretty good. The number of hurricanes would probably have to pick up some to go from three to as high as eight, but only one or two would have to reach Category 3 strength to verify the numbers on expected major hurricanes.

If La Nina gets going as forecast in the Pacific, the Atlantic could see a late-season burst of activity. But possibly offsetting that is the fact that the sea surface temperatures have been unusually cool in some of the Cape Verde region west of Africa, where many mid- and late-season hurricanes form.

It will still be a couple of months before we can quit looking for tropical storms and start looking for winter storms instead.