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.

Trip yields intense moment

Hitting the road for two weeks to observe violent storms up close is always intense.

Thousands of miles of travel, topped with a couple of major storm encounters, leave me emotionally and physically exhausted for days upon my return.

But two days of the 2008 storm chase trip rose several notches above any of the other 53 days I've spent on these trips since my first in 2005.

A half-hour or so late May 22 was among the top two or three most extreme storm experiences of my life.

It started out as just trying to find somewhere to be besides our hotel in WaKeeney with a supercell storm bearing down on the western Kansas town. We had already seen at least seven tornadoes, successfully bouncing between supercells to good viewing locations. We had barely even been sprinkled on.

Heading south both to evade the storm's core and to get a better look, a cone started lowering to our west a few miles south of WaKeeney, backlit by eerie late-day sunlight. We pulled off a short distance onto a gravel road just off U.S. 283 to gain a better vantage point.

The rest is recorded in video and photos posted on my roanoke.com blog. The tornado passed a mile or less west of us. On the video that was posted May 23, the tornado disappears behind a van. That was the van I was driving. Our van's video camera had lost battery power minutes before.

Dave Carroll, the trip leader driving the other van, and I each noticed the sheets of rain wrapping around the back side of the tornado, headed our way. "We've got to get out of here, Dave," I said on one radio. "We're going to get hooked," Dave said a few seconds later on the other.

Other chasers began pulling out on the narrow road, and we were unable to get our vans turned around quickly. So we backed down the gravel road.

Dave was able to back down the road onto the highway first. By the time I got to the highway, the edge of the rain and wind had arrived, so I couldn't see well enough to back onto the highway. I backed around in the road and pulled out onto the side of the highway just in time for the full brunt of the "hook" to arrive.

For about the next 5 minutes, though it seemed much longer, our van was buffeted by 80 mph winds, blinding sheets of rain, and a salvo of mostly small hailstones.

Dave's van creeped forward along the side of the highway to a gravel road that went east.

He made the turn and was out of the hook within just a few hundred yards.

Voices from the other van crackled on the radio from time to time as we hunkered down.

Taylor White, a Virginia Tech marching band trombone player, pulled her legs up under her in the front passenger seat. Sandy LaCorte and Morgan Weeks of the University of North Carolina-Asheville's meteorology program clasped hands and covered their heads with a sweater in the middle seats. Joel Willis, a Pulaski County High School senior, and Jordan Rollins, a National Guardsman and Tech student, put their heads between their arms in the back seat.

I prayed and waited. I knew the wind and rain would soon pass, but I was concerned about baseball-sized hail. It never came, thankfully.

Finally, I noticed the winds switching from southwest to more southerly and southeasterly, as the inflow followed the storm toward WaKeeney. The rain slackened just enough that I was able to slowly move forward to the same gravel road, making the turn east.

Several minutes later, the two vans were reunited at the road's intersection with another highway miles to the east.

Tech students Andrew Smith, Trevor Owen and Jessica Burchard, along with Tech instructor Jennifer Henderson and Maryland high schooler Marielle Taft, traded stories, hugs and relief with their counterparts in our van. Dave and I debriefed each other on what had just happened, as we watched almost continuous lightning to our northwest near WaKeeney.

As forceful as the hook had been, we were barely in the outskirts of this ferocious storm. What the core of the storm could do was plainly evident when we returned to our hotel in WaKeeney.

A large white van had its windows shattered. Inside the lobby, which had been soaked when the doors blew open, several young adults who had been in that van were bleeding from the broken glass. They were a chase team that had stopped for the day and were in the parking lot of a restaurant when the storm swept in.

Across the road, a convenience store where we had bought food and gas during the morning had its glass door and several windows blown out. A hangar was completely destroyed a few blocks from the hotel.

We could have been in WaKeeney when it hit. We were much safer where we had been.

These chase trips always swirl together a mix of emotions. On the video of our tornado intercept, the excited exclamations of college students can be heard. There has been some criticism about that, and it's probably at least partly justified. But it is a real emotion, so I've made no effort to hide it.

Having lived near many violent tornadoes in Arkansas, walked a destruction scene with the relatives of victims, and observed about 20 tornadoes, I have not resolved my own dual feelings about these storms. I don't wish them on anyone, never want them to destroy life or property, but when they happen, I'd rather be where I can observe them.

I hope what we learn about these storms can serve to save lives as each of us continues forward in our education and careers.

The next night, as we drove through Hays, Kan., with tornado sirens wailing and police and fire vehicles zigzagging through the streets with loudspeakers announcing the tornado warning, the point was driven home to our student chasers, all but one of whom had never lived in Tornado Alley.

The people who live there can't just pack up and leave, as we did, returning Monday to the blessedly tranquil weather we normally experience along the Blue Ridge.

Tornado-tossed Dorothy said it best in the "Wizard of Oz": There's no place like home.