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.

Jet stream can make U.S. climate lopsided

Fire on one coast, chill on the other.

This phrase works quite often, as it does now.

Much of the West Coast has had a hot, dry summer, while much of the East has had a cool, wet one.

Currently, wildfires are raging in Southern California, while a Canadian air mass is expected to bring a touch of fall to Southwest Virginia this morning, with lows in the 40s and lower 50s.

The North American continent is just the right size to commonly see the phenomenon of the jet stream being far to the north on one side and far to the south on the other. That's why it's not unusual to have extreme heat and drought on one side of the country while it's cool and moist on the other side.

This is really borne out in late fall and winter when, sometimes, the same high pressure system forcing fiery Santa Ana winds through Southern California's arid valleys is also pushing Arctic chill dotted with snowflakes over the Appalachians.

But the El Nino pattern of warm oceans in the equatorial Pacific Ocean usually leads to big rainstorms later in the fall and winter in Southern California. If those occur, they will be welcome to quell the fires, but mudslides will be a threat with so many scorched and parched hillsides.

Weather Journal appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.