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.

Rain gauge filling up one shower at a time

The concept of "normal rainfall" is a something of a fallacy.

Climate normals are the average of extremes and vary somewhat depending on the time frame used. In general, though, it is reasonable to expect a little more than 40 inches of rainfall each year in Roanoke.

Using the current data accepted by the National Climatic Data Center, Roanoke's normal annual rainfall is 42.49 inches, based on the 30-year average from 1971 to 2000. Using the old 1961 to 1990 data set, the city's normal annual rainfall was 41.13 inches.

Yet, looking at nearly 60 years of data from mid-1948 to the end of 2007, the annual average is 40.37 inches.

But whichever exact figure is used, it's obvious it doesn't take a lot of heavy rains to reach normal over the course of year -- less than an inch a week, in fact.

Eight-tenths of an inch a week will get us near 42 inches. One-third of an inch every three days gets us close to 40 inches.

In reality, rain never comes that evenly. But this month, it's been about as close as it gets. About every three or four days, there has been a new rain, never torrential. As a result, with 2.33 inches through Saturday, April is still about one-third of an inch above normal in rainfall for Roanoke.

A new round of April showers may be under way to start the week as you read this.