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.

Dry winter intensifies our drought

If there were only one word to describe winter 2008-09 nationally, it would be: dry.

The winter as a whole, December to February by meteorological definition, was the fifth driest on record for the United States, minus Alaska and Hawaii, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

January and February made up the driest two-month period to start a year since records began in 1895, according to the center, for both the 48 contiguous states and for Virginia.

That doesn't mean that every spot in the country or in Virginia was extremely dry, but that averaging the whole of each, it was the driest such period in 115 years of record keeping.

Texas had its driest winter on record. New Jersey and Delaware had their driest Februarys.

Precipitation for the winter was consistently above normal in only one area of the country, the Upper Midwest, where Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin were each above normal.

So the generous rains of this past weekend certainly helped with short-term surface moisture locally, but the long-term drought has continued to grow not just in Virginia, but in many other states, too.

Weather Journal will be taking a break. It will return Wednesday, March 25.