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.

Month pulled out of dry hole

This past weekend's rains will keep September from going down as a very dry month.

Roanoke had a little more than 2½ inches of rain over the weekend, most of it Saturday, putting the month at 3.14 inches going into what is very likely to be a dry last day. Normal rainfall for September is 3.85 inches.

Blacksburg had a bit more than 2 inches Friday through Sunday, most of it Saturday, as anyone at the Virginia TechMiami game could attest. At 2.33 inches total for the month, September will still be below the 3.39 inches that is considered normal.

Climate normals, as figured by the National Climatic Data Center, are the 30-year averages from 1971 to 2000. In a few years, the normals will roll over to the 1981-2010 period.

September has been slightly more than a degree above normal in both Roanoke (69.5 degrees, 1.4 above normal) and Blacksburg (64.4 degrees, 1.1 above normal). Today's cooler than normal temperatures might bump those figures down a bit.

Slightly above normal temperatures have been the rule in 2009, with March, April, June and August also about a degree above normal. January was extremely close to normal, February much above normal, and July much below normal.

While the month will start out cool, with possibly even some 30s in remote valleys by Thursday morning, atmospheric signals point to slightly warmer than normal temperatures again the rule in much of the first half of October.