Kevin Myatt

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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.

Cold, sunny weather disappoints many folks

Cold and dry weather is a waste, most people seem to believe.

Snow lovers think it's a waste of cold air. Without enough moisture for the cold air to crystallize into snowflakes, what's the point of it being cold?

Warm weather lovers think it's a waste of sun rays. When it's not warm enough for outdoor activities in shorts and short-sleeves, what's the point of having all those bright, sunny days?

Our first week of December is turning out to be just that, cold and dry. The next couple of nights will be our coldest to date this season, with lows in the teens to lower 20s in most of our region.

While upslope snows will get going across the border in West Virginia late Thursday on a new burst of cold, northwest winds from the Arctic, the most we'll probably see in the New River and Roanoke valleys are a few snow showers with no measurable accumulation late Thursday and early Friday.

During this pause in active weather, I looked back at Roanoke's weather records to get an idea of how common it is to have prolonged cold and dry weather.

Many people, myself included, presume that if winter months are colder than average, they will also have more snow than average. Conversely, we presume that when winter months are warmer than average, they will have less snow than average.

I looked at temperature and snowfall records in the months of December, January, February and March for each winter between 1948-49 and 1995-96. I didn't go beyond 1996 because of that troublesome snowfall data gap at Roanoke Regional Airport in the years 1997-2004, so the most recent years are not represented in this impromptu study.

What I found is that our presumptions about warmer than normal months are true most of the time. Of 56 months with a mean temperature 2 or more degrees above the long-term average, 48 had snowfall of an inch or more below average, including 21 with no measurable snow at all.

So 85 percent of warm winter months had below average snowfall. That certainly makes sense.

There were exceptions, though. Seven of the warm months had above average snowfall, while only one fell within an inch of average, which has as much to do with my arbitrary, narrow cutoff range as anything else.

Of the seven warm but snowy months, February 1961 stands out the most. Though temperatures were 2.3 degrees above normal that month, 20.7 inches of snow fell, or only about 2 inches less than what we receive in an entire season. Looking at the daily records that month, there was a large wet snow (14.2 inches) when it was barely cold enough to snow a week into the month, then no more snow and a warm spell with temperatures in the 70s several days later.

Our presumptions about cold months being snowy also prove to be true in a general sense, but the margin is much narrower. Of 67 months during the 1948-96 period with mean temperatures 2 or more degrees below the long-term average, 37 had snowfall an inch or more above average, while 24 were an inch or more below average. The remaining five were within an inch of normal.

So, while 55 percent of cold months proved to be snowy relative to average, more than a third of those cold months -- 36 percent -- were not snowy. Four of those cold months had no measurable snow at all.

Roanoke set its all-time record low of minus 11 degrees on Jan. 21, 1985, in a month and a winter that featured much less snow than average -- only 2.7 inches in January 1985 (average is 6.4) and 7 inches for the 1984-85 winter.

So though it frustrates snow lovers and warmth wishers alike, cold and dry weather isn't really uncommon. But let's don't yet project this weather over the entire winter ahead. It's only the first week of December. Patience, my friends.