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.

Roanoke's peak summer heat would normally be behind us, but hold on

If you look at the daily normal temperatures for Roanoke, the ball has just barely crested the hill and is about to start its slow roll toward winter.

Roanoke reaches its summer heating peak, based on the 1971-2000 averages used to denote norms by the National Climatic Data Center, on July 22, 23 and 24, when the normal high is 88 and the normal low is 66.

The average high for each day from July 13 to August 5 is 88, but the average low for each of those days is 65, except for July 22 to 24, when it is 66.

So, technically, those three days are normally the warmest of the year.

After Aug. 6, the normal high temperature starts to decline; the normal low follows suit two days later.

By the end of August, a normal day for Roanoke features a high of 83 and a low of 61.

But how often are temperatures normal?

Two of the three dates that share Roanoke's all-time record high of 105 are yet to come.

That mark was set on July 10, 1936; Aug. 5, 1930, and Aug. 21, 1983.

And as recently as 1986, Roanoke dipped into the low 40s before the end of August.

Last August was a sizzler, the hottest monthly average temperature in 60 years of record-keeping at Roanoke's airport.

In upcoming days, we'll try to peer into the August just ahead.