Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• Weather Journal remains on break
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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.

Year's wet weather has been dry on drama

A year ago, there had been so many big weather events by the year's halfway point that I ran a top 10 weather events column for the first six months. Most of those events made it into the top 10 for the entire year.

2009 is a different animal.

With the year half in the books, it has not produced a lot of dramatic single weather events.

The most remarkable thing about the year so far is that it has been rainy enough to put an end to a 4-year dry period and completely erase drought from Southwest Virginia.

In fact, in Roanoke, with 22.02 inches, it is the rainiest first half of a year since 2003, when 31 ¹₂ inches of rain had already fallen by June 30 on the way to topping 53 inches for the year, nearly a foot above normal.

Blacksburg has already had 26.22 inches of rain, more than 4 inches greater than normal, and the most for the first half of a year there since more than 33 inches fell by June 30 during the strong El Nino of 1998. (Only 13 additional inches fell in Blacksburg in the second half of 1998).

But despite a lot of rain, we've not had much in the way of river flooding or extremely severe flash flooding. Some of the heavier rainfall in May and early June created some localized flash flooding, but it was sporadic rather than widespread.

Severe weather has also been sporadic. Floyd County got a ground-covering hailstorm back in April, and rotating storms over Vinton on June 10 and over Franklin County a week earlier drew tornado warnings, but severe weather outbreaks with widespread wind damage, numerous reports of large hail or damaging tornadoes haven't really happened, as they did frequently in May and June of 2008.

Temperatures have been pretty steady in running near normal to 2 degrees above normal each month, with only February ranging significantly above that. January set the tone: exactly normal at Blacksburg, one-tenth of a degree above normal in Roanoke.

The above-normal average over the first six months was not the result of frequent or extreme heat waves, but rather lots of humidity holding low temperatures above average on many nights.

Despite running slightly above normal overall, the most notable temperature event of the year was a mid-January cold wave that was the region's sharpest in 13 years, with a low of 3 in Roanoke and below zero in many surrounding areas.

Winter almost became extremely noteworthy when it nearly became Roanoke's least snowy winter on record. But that brush with history was wiped away with a Feb. 28-to-March 2 snowfall that totalled an official 3 ¹₂ inches in Roanoke and 4 to 12 inches over most of Southwest Virginia.

That quickly gave way to a short but torrid run of early-season heat in the low to mid 80s a few days later. But that kind of radical cold-to-hot shift has proved to be an exception rather than the rule this year.

So, while 2009 so far has had some periods of variable weather, it has yet to produce a signature weather event across Southwest Virginia.

Still, six months remain with lots of atmospheric twists and turns yet to go.

Weather Journal appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.