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.

Tropical storms are nothing to take lightly

Edouard arrived on the Texas coast as only a tropical storm on Tuesday.

Only a tropical storm.

Certainly, we're all glad it wasn't a full-fledged hurricane, but that phrase "only a tropical storm" can carry some faulty assumptions.

Think back to Feb. 10 -- the big windstorm in Southwest Virginia. We had about six hours or so of sustained winds 30 to 50 mph, with gusts topping 60 mph.

Tens of thousands of people lost power. Trees and limbs were knocked down everywhere you looked. Many structures sustained roof damage.

That afternoon of wind was equivalent to a moderately strong tropical storm.

Increase the winds a little bit from Feb. 10, throw in some heavy rain and roiling waves, and that's what a tropical storm is like.

So, while it wasn't that bad compared to a hurricane, being where Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall would have been a more intense event than almost anything Southwest Virginia experiences.