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Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog
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.
Rains not enough to dent drought
By Kevin Myatt
The Roanoke Times
It rained off and on for four days, but didn't do much to help the drought.
At least that's what the latest Drought Monitor from the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb., shows.
Generally speaking, everywhere along and south of Interstate 81, including the Roanoke Valley, is rated under "moderate drought," while areas to the north and west are under "abnormally dry" conditions, the early stages of drought.
The latest Drought Monitor, based on rainfall, soil and stream data, was effective as of Tuesday morning.
So it includes almost all of the rainfall that occurred with the slow-moving low-pressure system that meandered southeastward through the mid-Atlantic states Saturday through Tuesday.
Roanoke got nearly 1½ inches out of those four showery days, enough to put April slightly ahead of normal in rainfall to date.
But this kind of rainmaker for us is a fluke, not the typical way we would collect meaningful April rainfall.
Often, spring brings organized low-pressure systems out of the Gulf of Mexico, either passing up the coast or just to the west of the Appalachians. Either way, we get rain ... a long, slow, cool rain from systems passing to our east, and hard, stormy, warm rains from systems passing to the west.
The main trouble for nearly the past year and a half is that a lot of major storm systems have turned into the central United States.
In late 2006 and early 2007, it was the Plains states that reaped copious rainfall, turning some regions from drought to flooding.
For the past few months, the favored track has generally been a little farther east through the lower Mississippi River Valley into the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes. I personally saw the evidence of that earlier this week in Arkansas. Rivers were still swollen out of their banks after rising earlier this month to levels not seen in decades.
Lows so far west often sweep cold fronts through, but carry the bulk of their energy too far from us for widespread rain. We often get a half-inch or less when we need to be getting regular inch-plus rains to ease the drought. We still haven't had an inch of rain in any 24-hour period since October.
This weekend, another low-pressure system tracking toward the Great Lakes will pull a cold front across our region, which could trigger a few storms in the area Saturday. A cold front on Monday may be stronger and more likely to produce rain and storms in our area.
But there is still nothing in the long-range pattern to indicate that any kind of shift to a wetter pattern is in the offing.
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