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.

Offshore system has little hurricane potential

A low pressure system is spinning off the coast of the Carolinas and may meander just offshore the next few days.

Our natural tendency this time of year is to think it might become tropical. But that is unlikely with this low because of strong winds aloft that resist tropical development.

The low is baroclinic, which means its counterclockwise spin develops along a boundary of different air masses. The spin is focused in the middle to upper layers of the atmosphere, with any surface rotation developing because the spin is transferred downward through the atmosphere.

This is the way most low pressure systems occur, and it’s quite different from tropical lows, which form from the surface upward as the latent heat of ocean water — generally above 80 degrees — is released during evaporation.

Still, there are some cases when a baroclinic low in the middle to upper levels of the atmosphere will spin up a surface low that will become tropical in nature as it moves over warm waters with calm winds aloft.

That slight possibility is why the National Hurricane Center is monitoring the low off the Carolinas, though the official forecast maintains that tropical development is unlikely.

Weather Journal appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.