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Current Conditions: Fair
Temperature: 63°F Wind: From the NW at 3 mph Relative Humidity: 90% |
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MON Mostly Sunny 66°F...86°F |
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TUE Scattered Thunderstorms 62°F...81°F |
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WED Partly Cloudy 58°F...73°F |
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.
Iowa flood recalls '85 flood here
By Kevin Myatt
The Roanoke Times
The recent flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had me thinking about what a similar disaster would look like in Roanoke.
Based on the 2000 census, the two cities are similar in size. Cedar Rapids' central city population is about 120,000, its metropolitan area population is about 192,000. The city of Roanoke's population is 95,000; its metro area has 235,000.
Each city has a fairly shallow namesake river flowing through it. The Cedar River's flood stage is 12 feet; the Roanoke River's flood stage is 10 feet.
During the recent historic flooding that displaced as many as 24,000 in Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River crested at 31.1 feet, or 19.1 feet above flood stage.
During the infamous Flood of 1985, the Roanoke River crested at 23.4 feet, or 13.4 feet above flood stage.
For all of those who remember the heartache and chaos caused by the 1985 flood, which killed 10 people in the Roanoke Valley, imagine how much worse it could have been if the water had been 5.7 feet deeper, or roughly the height of an average-sized person.
That's not a perfect comparison, as it doesn't take into account details of local hydrology and geography affecting each river. But it does put Cedar Rapids' catastrophe in some perspective.
It all seems so far removed from us as dry, crackly forest underbrush keeps burning by the hundreds of acres on mountains around us. But there will be another Roanoke River flood someday, hopefully not as severe as the most recent one on the Cedar River.
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