Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Some nighttime weather fireworks on Independence Day?
• A new type of cloud?
• Much the same into the foreseeable future

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.

Exit Fay; enter Gustav, Hanna

Fay certainly played the diva, ignoring the script and commanding the stage for two full weeks. But it's time for Fay to get off the stage and make way for Gustav and Hanna.

It was Aug. 13 the first time I noted what would become Tropical Storm Fay on my blog, wondering, "Will this tropical disturbance become the next big thing?" That was so long ago, Michael Phelps had only won five of his eight Olympic gold medals.

Fay stubbornly refused the most direct path to infamy, staying below hurricane strength through its entire life. But it flooded Florida with 1 to 2 feet of rain as it made landfall four separate times.

Then, a week after it was originally projected to do so, it finally delivered Tuesday and Wednesday on its potential to bring major drought-easing rains to Southwest Virginia and other dry neighboring regions.

So exit Fay, enter Gustav and Hanna.

Tropical Storm Gustav, which lashed Jamaica on Thursday after a deadly hit on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, has a solid chance to be the highest-impact hurricane for the United States since the frenzied 2004 and 2005 tropical seasons.

New Orleans is nervous, and properly planning, but take with a shaker or two of salt any forecast map that shows it making a direct bead on the Katrina-scarred Crescent City some five days out.

The larger point is that Gustav is likely to move over the hot waters of the open Gulf of Mexico, it's likely to be under favorable atmospheric conditions for considerable strengthening and it may come ashore as a Category 3 (111-130 mph winds) or even stronger storm somewhere along the Gulf Coast next week.

That could be New Orleans; Galveston, Texas; Mobile, Ala., or somewhere else. Almost anywhere it hits, it would be a destructive beast.

It will at least threaten, if not cut through, the heart of petroleum production and refining territory in the western Gulf of Mexico. I'm not an economist, but you don't have to be one to figure out what that will do to gas prices.

And then, as if Gustav weren't enough, there's the newly minted Tropical Storm Hanna just northeast of the Caribbean.

Hanna's future is more uncertain, but it too will probably become a hurricane, and current projections are that high pressure to the north will force Hanna to turn west toward the Southeast U.S. just as Gustav is making landfall along the Gulf Coast next week.

There is some chance a passing low pressure system could pick up Hanna and pull it northeast away from the U.S., but that's not the expectation of hurricane forecasters.

What specific effects Gustav and/or Hanna will have on Southwest Virginia are not even vaguely discernible at this point.

If Gustav makes landfall on the central or western Gulf Coast as expected, it would probably have a hard time moving directly our way against expanding high pressure.

The remnants of most tropical systems that come ashore in the western Gulf are eventually pushed east by prevailing upper-level winds, but it's impossible to say now what Gustav would look like by then and where the bulk of it would be carried.

If Hanna does indeed take aim on the Southeast coast, it could be funneled right to us by clockwise-rotating high pressure to its north and northeast.

Any system making landfall on the Atlantic and moving right at us would have a much higher impact than did Fay. Not only would there be a threat of heavy rainfall, but it would maintain a considerable amount of its wind.

Let me emphasize that this is little more than barely educated speculation at this point. Gustav is at least five days from landfall. Hanna is a week or more away, if it even makes landfall.

What is certain is that following Fay's river-recharging rains, the stakes will be much higher if either or both of these new systems affect our region. A new tropical system will not be coming in over bone-dry ground.

A similar rain to the widespread 3 to 7 inches that just fell would almost certainly cause significant flooding.

We do still need rain, but now that the big dump has passed, it would be better to get it in something smaller than typically tropical increments.