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.

Snow falls hard or hardly at all

The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

This statement is true this winter whether you consider snow to be treasure or trouble.

Even if not another flake fell, 2007-08 would be the snowiest winter on record in Madison, Wis., with more than 79 inches. Many other locations in Illinois and Wisconsin are also experiencing one of their snowiest winters on record.

Meanwhile, Roanoke sits at a hair below 5 inches, with no solid prospects of additional significant snowfall on the horizon. Roanoke averages nearly 2 feet of snow each winter, but we've seen that much only once in the past decade.

New York City has struggled to keep ahead of Atlanta in total snowfall this winter, each with less snow than even we've seen. Meanwhile, many locations to the north in New England piled up snow at a near-record pace in December.

The mountains of the West are buried with more snow than many regions have seen in years.

There seems to be lots of snow to go around this winter, but little of it for the Middle Atlantic or central Appalachians.

Whether you think we're abundantly rich or desperately poor without winter's flakes, the rich keep getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.

It's going to continue this weekend. A new storm system will take a familiar northeastward path toward the Great Lakes, rather than sweeping up the East Coast. That will spread yet more snow into the regions of the upper Midwest, such as Illinois and Wisconsin, that have already seen tons of snow, while mild and moist air is pulled ahead of the storm toward the East Coast.

If enough cold air is trapped at the surface when the moisture arrives, there might be some ice late tonight and early Sunday.

Otherwise, it's yet another cold rain, though a much-needed rain, considering long-term drought and short-term fire concerns.

It's not just other parts of the United States that are having big winters while it's been mild here.

The Northern Hemisphere as a whole is seeing above-average areal coverage of snowfall this winter.

You may have read about the brutal winter parts of China and Afghanistan have had, with hundreds dead and transportation systems stymied. Perhaps you've also read about snowstorms that buried Tehran, Iran, and Jerusalem, and even snowflakes falling for the first time in the memories of many longtime residents of Baghdad.

It all just comes down to the quirks of the jet stream and how it is threaded around the gears of high pressure ridges and low pressure troughs around the world.

For our region, persistent high pressure off the Southeast U.S. coast has consistently bumped storm systems toward the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes rather than allowed them to move up the East Coast, while the lack of high pressure near Greenland has allowed cold air masses to move out after a couple of days rather than hang around.

Fast-moving cold air masses and storm systems missing us to the west have effectively eliminated any chance of a major winter storm or prolonged Arctic outbreak in our area.

With just two weeks until meteorological winter is over on Feb. 29, this winter has provided only one decent-sized snow, a few nuisance ice events and bag of Sunday afternoon wind that left many of you without heat on one of the season's colder nights.

That windy Sunday afternoon may well end up being the most memorable thing about the 2007-08 winter.

There will be a window of cold next week as Arctic air streams in behind this weekend's storm system. Beyond that, the signals are mixed and not clear as to whether winter can make a very late appearance during the last week of February or a tardy arrival in March.

It does look like there may be some overall tendency toward a few cold snaps during the next two or three weeks. Just one storm could swing far enough east during one of those cold spells and intensify enough just one time to change the entire complexion of this winter.

Odds are that won't happen, with the favored storm track still to our west. I would still say we'll see the ground turn white at least once more between now and the end of March, but a big snowstorm, prolonged cold or any real "winter" beyond a fringe of ice or a couple of days of slush seem beyond what this winter has in it.

But then, I declared early that it probably wouldn't make 100 degrees yet again last summer only to see it do so four times in August.

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