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.

As a sticky September winds down, autumn moves in

When you feel your foot go to sleep, it's time to move around to get the blood flowing.

That's what this weather pattern is getting ready to do. The circulation has been cut off, so it needs to start moving to get the air flowing again.

We've been in a really stagnant weather pattern for a couple of weeks.

Most of that time, there has been some kind of low pressure system spinning off to our west or southwest. It hasn't been close enough to give us a lot of rain, as appeared likely about a week ago, but it has been just close enough to spin in moisture for many humid, at times dreary, days.

Georgia and some neighboring states experienced a different result from the stalled weather pattern earlier this week. Bands of torrential rain continuously moved over some of the same places this week, resulting in massive and deadly flooding.

A stagnant weather pattern like this isn't uncommon in September, but it's usually a result of July and August weather hanging around an extra month.

This summer, however, featured an unusually fast-flowing weather pattern with an atypically south-diving jet stream that kept systems moving along and often brought some cooler air into our region. So this persistent sticky stuff seems a bit out of place after the mild summer of 2009.

A series of events across the Northern Hemisphere will allow the jet stream to dip farther south and trigger a progression of cold fronts that will bring weather at least resembling autumn to our region by next week.

Thursday was likely the last sultry summerlike day for a while.

Temperatures will cool about 10 degrees today as a cold front sags in from the north.

The mercury may not get out of the 60s on Saturday as a stronger cold front pushes some rain our way. Once that front is by us, the pretty weather sets in. Expect several days next week with sunny skies, highs in the 60s and 70s, and lows in the 40s and 50s.

In the bigger picture, the developing pattern change may indeed signal the start of our inevitable march into autumnlike weather.

As the sun angle lessens and the days get shorter, the mean jet stream position drops southward. The jet stream, generally speaking, marks the dividing line between warm, sticky subtropical air and cool, dry polar air. That's a big part of why much of the nation's unsettled weather is focused along the jet stream.

So step by step, we begin moving toward winter.

There are already a few trees here and there changing color, but the large-scale foliage change may get going in earnest, starting at the highest elevations and working downward, if we can manage a few chilly mornings next week.

And mountain snow showers are probably only a few weeks away.

That should get the blood flowing for many of you.