Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

kevin.myatt
@roanoke.com
981-3341

Weather with Kevin Myatt

Recent columns

• We got graupel, but not on official record
• Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
• Forecast for Weather Journal: Partly print, with frequent Internet
• Column archive

Read the Weather Journal blog

• Sprinkles or flurries possible Tuesday, but maybe something bigger for the weekend?
• For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
• Coldest morning of winter so far likely across much of Southwest Virginia; Tuesday precipitation looking doubtful
• Weather Journal blog

#swvawx on Twitter

@KevinMyattWx

• Follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinMyattWx

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.