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.

In truth, mystery of Sunday's hailstones not much of a mystery at all

Temperatures rose into the 80s on Sunday, and yet, chunks of ice fell out of the sky in parts of Southwest Virginia, covering the ground like snow in some areas.

Hail can seem weird and mysterious, but the mechanics of its formation are relatively simple. Hail forms when thunderstorm updrafts lift rain droplets high enough to freeze.

Newly formed hailstones start falling, but can continue to be lifted if the updrafts are strong enough, developing new layers of ice until they become heavy enough to fall. This is how a hailstone gets bigger and why it has rings reminiscent of an onion.

Hail forms more readily if freezing temperatures dip low in the atmosphere, or if there are especially strong updrafts. On Sunday, temperatures were unusually low in the atmosphere for this time of year, and daytime heating and moisture below that cold air produced strong updrafts.

Rotation in a thunderstorm to separate updrafts and downdrafts can cause very large hail -- golf ball-sized or bigger -- to occur. In most of Southwest Virginia's storms, a strong downdraft wipes out the updraft, unleashing a barrage of wind, rain and hail, but killing the storm. Rotation lets updrafts continue unimpeded, lifting hailstones repeatedly.

Though hail becomes a little less frequent as the air heats up in midsummer, a severe thunderstorm on a 100-degree day in August is fully capable of imitating an ice machine.