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.

Dilemmas exist in trying to control hurricane's power

Ron Blum wants to throw cold water in a hurricane's eye.

Blum is the founder and chairman of the Egg Factory, a Roanoke-based innovation firm that, in 2000, applied for a patent on a proposed method to weaken hurricanes. The method involves the use of satellite-directed submersibles to create upwelling of cold water in the path of a hurricane's eye wall, potentially diminishing the hurricane's strength. The federal government rejected the patent application.

Earlier this year, a group that includes former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates applied for a patent on a hurricane-weakening proposal based on a similar principle.

Once Roanoke Times reporter Duncan Adams' front page story on the Egg Factory proposal ran on Aug. 22, I opened a discussion on the Weather Journal blog about whether man could and should try to weaken hurricanes.

Many opposed any efforts to mitigate hurricanes, saying that the natural system works better if man doesn't tamper with it, and that tampering with it can lead to unexpected effects. Others rebutted them, stating that saving lives alone justifies efforts to weaken hurricanes.

Being something of a weather purist, I openly admit I am resistant to intentional efforts to change the weather. I see a danger for efforts to control or direct weather to become polluted with ego, corruption and ill will.

But I don't apply those negatives to Blum or the Egg Factory particularly, or to others who sincerely want to reduce threats to life and property along our coasts.

While I have doubts about the financial and practical feasibility of these hurricane-dampening proposals, my biggest concern about weather modification in general is unintended consequences.

Hurricanes exist because they must. They take excess heat in oceans and convert it to kinetic energy in wind, and they take excess heat in the atmosphere and transfer it from tropical regions to temperate areas. Tropical systems also often aid in spreading rainfall to inland areas, though sometimes, too much comes too quickly.

I am relieved that the Egg Factory proposal "is designed to simply reduce the intensity of these rare major hurricanes, not eliminate them," in the words of George Hagerman, the group's ocean expert and a senior research associate with Virginia Tech.

But could changing the strength of a few hurricanes subtly change regional weather patterns, leading to bigger weather pattern shifts that cause some form of destructive weather elsewhere? Or could weakening hurricanes even cut down on needed rainfall in agricultural areas of the United States?

Hagerman doesn't think there is much to worry about weaker hurricanes inducing drought. He correctly points out that a minimal Category 1 Hurricane Agnes in 1972, combined with inland weather factors, put out widespread flooding rains through much of the Eastern United States.

He also states that "reducing the intensity of just one or two out of a dozen tropical cyclones each year should have little effect on the climate." Hagerman notes that large extratropical systems riding up the coast, commonly called nor'easters, may play an even larger role in heat transferal than hurricanes.

But what if weakening a few hurricanes leaves a little untapped atmospheric heat that intensifies a few of those nor'easters? It's these kinds of difficult-to-pinpoint trade-offs that most concern me about any weather modification.

Efforts to modify weather are already taking place, mostly in the form of localized cloud seeding for various purposes. Future efforts are inevitable.

I hope that anyone who seeks to modify weather or climate on a large scale will thoroughly and precisely examine all possible downstream and downwind effects.

But if someday reducing a deadly hurricane's strength before making landfall is achieved, I would prefer that a group of entrepreneurs based in Roanoke be credited rather than a billionaire from Seattle.