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.

Weather pattern means that some miss the rain train

Over the weekend, farmers in eastern Franklin County and near Wytheville reminded me that they were in need of rain, having missed out on the heavy downpours that had soaked areas not far from them.

A recurring phenomenon this month in Southwest Virginia has been thunderstorms caught in a "training effect." This is when storms keep moving or developing over the same locations, crossing over some areas like trains on a track, while other areas only hear rumbling in the distance.

On the morning of July 20 and then again late Thursday evening and early Friday morning, storms aligned south to north moved northward through the Roanoke Valley. The result was periods of heavy rain over some of the same locations, with 1-inch-plus totals common.

The line of storms Thursday and Friday was very narrow, so that some parts of central and eastern Roanoke and Roanoke County got torrential downpours exceeding 2 inches -- much of it in less than hour. There were several reports of flooded roads and some creeks out of their banks.

Meanwhile, the Salem area got lighter amounts and locations on the other side of Fort Lewis and Catawba mountains in western Roanoke County saw nothing or just sprinkles.

Early Monday morning, the train got stuck on the tracks roughly on the Interstate 81 corridor from Marion northeastward to near Blacksburg. So my farmer friend in Wytheville finally got his needed inch of rain.

If you're a have or have-not when it comes to July rain, it's because the trains keep running on your tracks or they've only been running on someone else's.