Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal remains on break
• Coastal low prompts Southwest Virginia flooding
• Hurricane Ida: Something extraordinary may be happening

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.

Wet month marches onward

March Madness is in full swing for the nation's weather, including record floods, snowstorms and tornadoes.

But for Southwest Virginia, it has so far just meant much-needed rain.

Today is likely to be the third of five straight rainy days. It might mess up your weekend plans, but this is good news for a region that has been more than 30 inches below normal over the past four years.

March has had three well-spaced wet periods, beginning with the March 1-2 snowfall. There was also a five-day period of rain at midmonth, March 12 to 16, before the current rainy spell that could take the month nearly to its close.

Those rainy periods have added up to give Roanoke 2.83 inches for March through 5 p.m. Thursday. That is still .41 inch below the normal rainfall to date for the month, and 2009 to date, at 6.77 inches, is still 2.78 inches below normal.

More rain expected today, Saturday and Sunday could dump an additional 1 to 2 inches across much of Southwest Virginia as a series of disturbances move through the area.

Severe thunderstorms are possible Saturday, especially in areas to the south and east of the Roanoke Valley.

Strong wind dynamics aloft may add some spin to whatever storms develop at the surface as a strong low pressure system passes nearby, dragging a cold front through. The limiting element for severe weather is instability, as there may not be much surface warmth to bubble upward into colder air aloft.

If the sun comes out for any period Saturday, our region's severe thunderstorm chances will go up. For now, it looks like the Carolinas and central and eastern Virginia stand a better chance of severe weather Saturday, with maybe a few gusty rumblers here. Locations west of the Appalachians will also get a stronger surge of warm air, and therefore carry a higher severe weather risk this weekend.

There are needed rains elsewhere, too. Georgia and the Carolinas, still parched in the mountainous areas of those states, look to get bonus rains off this week's series of systems.

Western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle are getting nailed by a late-season snowstorm, which will put some much-needed surface soil in a region being warned for extreme wildfire risk just a couple of days ago. But it will also likely paralyze the region under some house-sized snow drifts.

That underscores the point that the welcome rainfall is falling against the backdrop of widespread weather misery. Tornadoes are raking the South, such as the one that injured at least 20 people in Magee, Miss., on Thursday, and rivers are rising to record levels in the Dakotas. The Red River may crest at a record 43 feet at Fargo, N.D., today or Saturday, the result of recent precipitation, meltwater from a winter of heavy snow and ice jams in rivers.

Our wet March will save us from long-term drought misery only if April and May follow with rainfall reasonably close to normal. Dry weather the rest of spring would still leave us pretty dusty entering the hot months of summer.

But there may be another round or two of rain in the next seven to 10 days, and perhaps signs that the longer term trends may be breaking away from some of the patterns that have contributed to the dryness in recent years.

We'll examine that more closely in the near future.