Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal remains on break
• Coastal low prompts Southwest Virginia flooding
• Hurricane Ida: Something extraordinary may be happening

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.

Deaths from tornadoes could be on path to set grim record this year

2008 could easily become the deadliest year for tornadoes in the United States in 34 years.

Wednesday's deaths in Iowa and Kansas pushed the year's tornado death toll to 118.

There were 366 fatalities from tornadoes in 1974, a year that included the massive April 3-4 "Super Outbreak" over the eastern half of the country. Since then, only two years have topped 100 tornado deaths: 122 in 1984 and 130 in 1998.

Nearly half of this year's death toll occurred before the first week of February had ended -- 58 died in a Feb. 5 outbreak across the South.

Tornado activity typically hits a lull in summer, as the stronger upper-level winds that can spin thunderstorm updrafts retreat into Canada.

Fall, though, sometimes brings a secondary spike in tornadoes, as the jet stream returns from Canada, bringing cold air masses to clash with leftover heat from summer. Also, some tropical systems moving inland spawn scores of twisters.

Outside the February-June period, when severe weather typically starts near the Gulf Coast and slowly shifts northward, November is the nation's deadliest month for tornadoes.

A little more than half the year is left, though the historically most dangerous period for tornadoes in the U.S. will soon be past. But it would take only one major tornado in a populated area to drive the nation's death toll to a level not seen since the year Nixon resigned.