Kevin Myatt

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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.

Wet weather system is under pressure to deliver

If things can come together just right today and tonight, we will finally get a rain that makes a serious dent in the long-term drought.

Even if the atmospheric players are a little out of sync, we will likely get some helpful showers.

A week ago, I wrote about the potential for an upper-level low pressure system to become separated from the jet stream and spin in place over the south-central United States. That is in fact happening. (The credit goes to long-range computer models and those who have developed them, not me.)

To get such a "cut-off low," the jet stream first dips very far to the south. A pocket of strong winds rides through that jet-stream dip with such gusto that it spins all the way around the dip, cutting a counterclockwise circulation off from the jet stream.

This counterclockwise circulation is spinning around and around a couple of states to our west. Being cut off from the jet stream, the river of air high in the atmosphere that steers storms, the low will wobble around and not move anywhere fast.

That counterclockwise spin is pulling Gulf of Mexico moisture northward over regions of the southeastern U.S. that desperately need rain. That moisture caused Tuesday to be a cloudy, drizzly day in our area.

Today's scenario is extremely complicated, with both large-scale and small-scale factors at work. Relatively minor shifts could mean the difference in getting multiple inches of rain and having just a few showers.

We could benefit from some moisture being pulled in off the Atlantic Ocean today. Banked against the mountains, the upslope flow could squeeze out some locally heavy downpours.

There is a complex system of fronts and a surface low-pressure system to consider, too. The exact placement of these features will determine where the heaviest rain occurs.

The potential is certainly there to get well more than an inch of rain in many areas of Southwest Virginia. Somebody who needs it will probably get that much, and there is a chance that a few localized areas may get a bit too much too fast.

At the least, it seems likely that we'll get off-and-on showers today and possibly into Thursday and Friday, too.

These cut-off lows often give forecasters a headache with all their wobbles. By Tuesday afternoon, there was still great disagreement among various forecasters, national and regional, about how much rain would occur today and exactly where it would fall.

The upper-level low will eventually either get bumped off to the northeast or just spin itself out.

There is no obvious sign of a major change to either a wet pattern or a much cooler pattern, but be sure that Arctic air could make its first foray south with short notice anytime in the next few weeks.

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