Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal taking a long break
• Yes, there's still an Atlantic tropical season going on
• Freezing temperatures likely tonight

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.

More is needed of tropical systems

The grass is crusty and the ground is dusty in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

It's been a wonderfully cool August, especially compared with the torturous heat of a year ago, but we still need rain, folks. We've had only 0.07 inch in Roanoke so far this month, and just a quarter-inch in Blacksburg.

I usually wait until winter to draw out possible scenarios on systems that could bring precipitation our way several days out.

But, after Wednesday's juicy low-pressure system went mostly south of us, we are in such need of rain that I'm going to paint a scenario, plausible but far from certain, that could bring us substantial rain about a week from now.

Just northeast of the Caribbean, there is a tropical disturbance. Several computer forecast models take this disturbance toward Florida next week as high pressure builds over the Atlantic.

The disturbance may well become a tropical depression, tropical storm or even a hurricane. Fay is the next name on the list.

OK, so this might not be such good news for an unfortunate section of Southeast coastline, and there's always a risk with tropical systems of getting too much rain too fast, even far inland.

I'm not wishing a hurricane on anyone, nor do I want to reprise the flood of '85.

But it is a fact that many areas of the Southeast, up through the Carolinas into Virginia, depend on tropical systems for a certain amount of their annual rainfall, and the lack of such storms in recent years has contributed to the drought.

It's often true in weather that one man's dread is another man's bread.

The ideal scenario would be for a tropical storm or weak hurricane to miss the most populated and built-up areas of the coast, then rain a lot on inland drought areas while moving fast enough to not drown anybody in 20-plus inches of rain.

High pressure over the Atlantic may be well situated in a week's time to curve a tropical system in our general direction. Should this high remain in place, its clockwise flow could funnel Gulf moisture through the region for several days.

As I said, this is a plausible scenario, but there are many points at which it could go awry.

A better plan would be for low-pressure systems such as Wednesday's to start becoming a habit, pulling their slugs of Gulf moisture a bit farther northward.

A regular dose of 1-inch rains at steady intervals for months is really the only way to rout the drought.