Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• A little holiday snow ... maybe a lot in West Virginia
• Thankful to be back on Weather Journal
• Weather Journal remains on break

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.

Winter is trying to dig in its heels early

Winter is here.

There is little doubt about that, considering the larger-than-expected snow event on Monday and Tuesday, another round of snow showers with a reinforcing shot of cold air overnight Thursday into today, possibly more snow showers on Tuesday, and the likelihood of a deep southerly dipping jet stream for most of the foreseeable future.

By foreseeable future, I mean into at least the first week of December.

That doesn't mean every day will be struggling to get above freezing with snowflakes dancing in the air like some days this week, but don't expect any days in the 60s anytime soon.

The average through the period will probably be highs in the 40s, lows in the 20s. That's close to our normals for January.

It doesn't look like a very wet period, though. Surface and upper-air wind flow predominantly from the northwest tends to be dry, having crossed thousands of miles of land rather than oceans. It's made even drier on this side of the Appalachians by downslope effects, as whatever moisture is available goes into piling up snow in West Virginia's mountains.

But we should watch for any kind of strong disturbance that can get caught in the flow and drop as far south as the Southeast U.S. or Gulf of Mexico.

If any kind of low pressure can dig that far south, it would be able to tap Gulf of Mexico moisture, while keeping cold air in place, possibly triggering a winter storm.

As of now there is nothing like that on the horizon. The Thanksgiving weekend period into the first week of December holds some hints that such a development might be possible, but that's still a long way off for critical details.

The next storm system, a cold front moving through Monday, will bring more rain than snow. Low pressure in the Ohio Valley or Great Lakes should be able to sweep in enough milder air that our temperatures will be mostly above freezing when precipitation arrives.

Once the front goes by, though, a new round of cold air will move in, and familiar upslope snow showers will occur yet again as the northwest winds glide up the west slope of the Appalachians.

There is certainly no guarantee that this current weather pattern will frequently repeat this winter. But every day it holds this early in the season, the colder our ground becomes and the deeper the snowpack gets north of us. The cold air mass gets denser and harder to move.

Winter can be a persistent beast, if it gets going. This one is off to a strong start.