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.

Winds of February howl through Southwest Virginia

Wind roared through the bare February trees Thursday morning, knocking a few down, breaking branches and flickering the lights for some.

Widespread power outages and significant structural damage occurred in West Virginia. A hotel roof was blown onto a restaurant in Princeton, W.Va., as winds clocked at up to 68 mph rushed through the southern part of the state early Wednesday evening, according to the National Weather Service in Blacksburg. Those winds were boosted by a line of thunderstorms that weakened to gusty showers as it moved east.

At one time, nearly 1,500 customers were without power in Pulaski County, but generally power outages were sporadic in the New River and Roanoke valleys.

In most of Southwest Virginia, Thursday's tempest was a breeze compared with what happened a year and three days ago.

The Feb. 10, 2008, windstorm will likely be the standard to which all wind events are compared for a generation. It was roughly the equivalent of a cold tropical storm on a deceivingly sunny day, with hours of 35 to 50 mph winds and gusts sometimes reaching up to 74 mph in some parts of Southwest Virginia. By comparison, Thursday's winds in Roanoke were generally 20 to 35 mph with a peak gust of 55 mph.

"We frequently get gusty and sometimes isolated damaging winds behind many cold fronts every single year," Stephen Keighton, the science officer at the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, said in an e-mail. But in the Feb. 10, 2008, windstorm, "all the pieces happened to come together just right," Keighton said.

The Feb. 10 windstorm and Thursday's gusts had some common causes -- a cold frontal passage; westerly winds blowing perpendicular to the Appalachian mountain ridges, causing the winds to break into waves of gusts; and a strong gradient between high pressure and low pressure systems.

But two factors boosted last year's windstorm to another level: a pocket of extremely strong winds a little more than a mile above the surface, and daytime heating that caused warmer air near the surface to rise as colder air aloft sank. The layers of air mixed into one, and thus, the fast-moving air just above the mountaintops became a hard wind roaring through the mountains and valleys.

The ground and air were both extremely dry on Feb. 10, 2008. Fires became rampant. Statewide, 351 wildfires were reported, according to the Virginia Department of Forestry, by far the most on any single day in Virginia's history. That one day accounted for almost 30 percent of the state's wildfires for all of 2008.

"What we had on February 10th, was Virginia's equivalent to Southern California, prolonged wind, fire, and people trying to either save their homes or get out of the way of the approaching fire front," Phillip Manuel, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, said in an e-mail.

Wind damage was reported in all 40 counties of the Blacksburg office's forecast area, an unprecedented extent of damage. At the Feb. 10 storm's peak, more than 100,000 homes were without power across Virginia.

Thursday was another reminder that big wind is something we just have to deal with from time to time here in the mountains.

"Wind episodes will always be common here," Manuel said. "We live at the base of a dam ... the Appalachian Mountains. When water flows over a dam, the turbulent flow occurs at the base. Since our prevailing wind flow is from the west, our mountains will act as a dam, the wind accelerating as it crosses the higher peaks and crashing into the foothills just east of the mountains ... simple fluid dynamics."