Kevin Myatt

Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog

• UPDATE 10:15 AM: A not-so-gray Monday, then a little white?
• A race against the rain on Sunday
• Sunday afternoon showers possible, but heavier rain likely overnight into Monday

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.

Pacific balm helps keep Atlantic calm

The experts have started backpedaling from their fearsome forecasts for this 2006 Atlantic hurricane season.

The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over, and still more than a month from its statistical peak. The odds still favor there being at least one hurricane for the United States to deal with before this season is over, and there is still a chance that multiple hurricane strikes could occur, adding to the 10 that have happened the past two years.

It's fairly obvious, though, that with no Atlantic hurricanes by mid-August and only a couple of meager-looking systems with any potential at all to develop currently in the Atlantic (one is located southeast of the Carolinas and will have to be monitored closely the next few days), this tropical season isn't off to the fast and furious start many feared following the record 2005 season.

Sea surface temperatures are not as hot in the Atlantic Ocean as they were a year ago. They're still above the long-term average in parts of the Atlantic, especially in the autumn hurricane breeding ground between Africa and the Caribbean, but not the roasting hot temperatures 2 to 3 degrees above normal over large sections of the Atlantic as we saw last year.

But it's really not in the Atlantic where the most important changes are occurring.

In the equatorial Pacific, sea surface temperatures have been climbing. As the water heats there, more convection is firing, unlike last year when cool Pacific water temperatures created a relatively dry atmosphere. This convection robs some of the energy that would go into convection on the Atlantic side, and it also creates strong upper-level winds that blow from west to east into the Atlantic, shearing off the tops of would-be Atlantic tropical systems.

Long term, the warming Pacific could be the start of an important climatic shift that could affect weather patterns the world over for months or even years to come.

It could be the start of an El Nino phase. El Nino is a large-scale warming of the waters of the equatorial Pacific usually peaking around Christmas, hence its name, which translates as "boy child" in reference to the Christ child. The Climate Prediction Center gives a 50 percent chance of an El Nino developing by the end of 2006.

If an El Nino develops, it would be the first since a weak one in 2002-03. We haven't had a really strong El Nino going since 1997-98.

El Nino acts in combination with various other atmospheric patterns and climatic oscillations around the world, so one shouldn't generalize too much about what an El Nino means for weather in a given area.

However, generally speaking, El Nino periods do tend to be wet over much of the western and southern United States. That would actually be a welcome change, at least for a while, for many regions that have been arid for a few years now. When a strong El Nino is roaring, we tend to have a mild, wet winter with lots of rain and not too much snow or ice. A weaker El Nino, combined with other climatic patterns in Canada and the North Atlantic that force some colder air south, can mean lots of snow and ice as frequent wet storm systems encounter cold air.

We've experienced both kinds of El Nino effects historically, even recently. The late 1990s El Nino featured mild, wet winters, for example, while the most recent weak El Nino in 2002-03 combined with a strong trend toward colder air to produce our only above-normal snowfall winter in the 21st century to date.

I admit I'm getting way ahead of myself here talking about El Nino's effect on winter. First, we don't have an El Nino yet, with only slightly above-normal sea surface temperatures in a small part of the Pacific. Secondly, there's no guarantee we will have one, as the warming noticed in that region may or may not herald a larger trend. And thirdly, as we've discussed, the effects of El Nino will vary depending on its intensity and other climatic factors.

But in the short term, the slight warming in the Pacific is helping to dampen the Atlantic hurricane season. A full-fledged El Nino lasting into next summer might squelch the 2007 hurricane season down to just a very few storms.

Rumors that every hurricane season from now on must be like those of 2004 and 2005 are greatly exaggerated.

See the latest tidbits on weather, locally and nationally, on Kevin Myatt's Weather Journal blog at blogs.roanoke.com/weatherjournal/