Roanoke records now date back to 1912Posted Feb14, 2008 at 09:37 PMIf you keep up with daily climate statements from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, you may have noticed that some of Roanoke's record highs and lows now date to before 1947, which was the limit of the previous period of record based on the establishment of the Roanoke Regional Airport weather instrument site. In fact, those records now go back to 1912. This public information statement from the National Weather Service explains why. I hope to dig further into this in Weather Journal sometime in the near future. A 'quiet' weather pattern gave birth to an ill windPosted Feb11, 2008 at 11:44 AMDid I really have a blog entry titled "Quiet Weather Ahead" just three days ago? We all knew even then that a windy cold front was coming, but that's hardly unusual for February. By Saturday morning, it was obvious the winds would howl strongly, but a day-long gale with nearly hurricane-force gusts was not what came to mind. The high winds and fire danger were warned about by the National Weather Service and virtually all media 12-24 hours in advance, but this one went took itself up a notch to become something we won't forget for a long time. It is probably the weather event with the most widespread impact on our area since remants of hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne caused widespread flooding and tornadoes in September 2004. Besides the fires and power outages, there is a countless amount of small damage to many people's property, and heavy damage to some. The rest of this week offers some hope that we will get something we desperately need to help with the fires and the long-term drought: Rain. There is a good chance of rain in the Tuesday night-Wednesday time frame, and perhaps another shot toward Friday or Saturday. Next week may offer a window of opportunity for those of you who like winter. But that's a long way off. As we've seen, in just 3 days, the weather can go from quiet to wicked. Not your typical Southwest Virginia heat wavePosted Aug10, 2007 at 11:55 PMIt's still going to be hot today and for the next few days, but only regular summer hot around 90 as opposed to the extreme heat we've been having. We'll probably even dip into the 80s for highs next week, so get your wool coats ready. :-) I'm rather tired of both the triple-digit heat and writing about the heat, so I'm ready for a breather. Looking back at this particular heat wave, it was not your typical Southwest Virginia hot spell. Usually when we have extreme heat, there is little or no wind, the sky is milky white with haze, the mountains are shrouded behind layers of ozone, and it is very humid. This time around, there were almost constant blast-furnace winds rolling from the west down the mountain slopes, the sky was quite blue with amazing visibility for mid-summer (great for photographing a distant storm on Thursday evening), and the humidity was altogether tolerable even through the worst of the heat. It felt more like a "dry heat" at times. It seemed more akin to Plains and West-style summer heat than the oppressive mugginess of a Eastern heat wave -- at least in our area. Richmond and Norfolk, suffering their mid-upper 70s dew points, would have a much different take on it. Weather service helps you keep tabs on the next threatPosted Feb27, 2007 at 04:45 PMThe National Weather Service in Blacksburg has a neat new feature on what has been its current events page on its Web site that helps you keep track on upcoming severe, flooding, winter, fire, and heat/drought threats locally, regionally, nationally. Just click on the tabs at the top of the page for the latest "briefing pages" on these different types of inclement weather. Not only will you see a local map of warnings/advisories and clickable images of radar, satellite and surface map images, but also maps from national forecast office depicting broad areas of inclement weather threat. I have linked these maps quite often on this blog. So let's use this new feature for the upcoming system, which looks like a fairly rainy one for us on Thursday. Click here for the latest on the severe weather threat and the heavy/rain flooding threat from the upcoming storm. How hard did the wind blow?Posted Feb23, 2007 at 10:06 AMThe National Weather Service in Blacksburg is estimating the wind gust that toppled the church steeple in Northwest Roanoke to be 66 mph. The highest measured wind gust at the Roanoke Regional Airport was 59 mph. Wind advisories, fire weather watches and high wind warnings continue today most of Southwest Virginia. The winds have calmed some but are still quite gusty. Click here for the latest from the National Weather Service. Below is a listing from the weather service of wind gust measurements and estimates, plus observed wind damage, across the area. (Click on continued line if you are viewing the full blog) Yes, Rush Limbaugh quoted me on ThursdayPosted Feb16, 2007 at 01:32 PMSeveral of you have sent me e-mails noting that Rush Limbaugh quoted my Wednesday column on his Thursday radio program. The transcript is linked below. Let me state clearly that I did not intend in any way to make any statement on global warming, pro or con, in Wednesday's column. It merely points out that we have had unusual cold in Roanoke recently. In the transcript, Limbaugh did not make any assertions that I was making such a statement, but read it as a news item to support his own view that global warming hysteria is overblown. So, since he did not misrepresent my purpose in writing the column, I have no objections about his use of my material, and certainly don't object to being read for millions of listeners. Transcript of Rush Limbaugh that includes him quoting my column Climate change reportPosted Feb02, 2007 at 12:22 PMThe International Panel on Climate Change released a major new report today on climate change, the summary of which, in PDF form, can be found by clicking here. Primarily, this is not nor will it become a blog devoted to the broader issues of global climate, but instead to local short-term weather, and it's extremely difficult to resolve global climate effects to a local, short-term level. But, whatever your viewpoint on the subject, I want to make this study available to you. I've barely had time to scan it myself today, and may revisit the subject in Weather Journal in the near future. Fast-melting GreenlandPosted Jan16, 2007 at 09:46 PMI've had a couple of different readers take me to task for my column on Saturday about global warming, believing that I somehow was implying that rapid glacial melting was not occurring in Greenland when I wrote about the gradual nature of global warming. That was not my intent at all. Rapid melting in Greenland is obvious. I've seen the satellite photos. But the way we got there, according to much observation and research, was primarily through a gradual rise in nighttime and wintertime low temperatures in the Arctic region over several past years rather than suddenly spiking high temperatures. It is widely called "global warming" but it is not uniform across the Earth's surface, and warming average temperatures have been noted at a disproportionate level in low temperatures in the high northern latitudes. The main point of the article was that the recent mild weather could not be with any real certainty be linked to global warming. The mild weather was more a product of the Eastern Pacific Oscillation in the negative phase ... or a strong low in Gulf of Alaska area continually spinning mild Pacific air across the nation ... and El Nino, or the warming of central Pacific waters, entering a moderate phase. Well, the EPO is positive now, the Gulf of Alaska low is no more and El Nino is weakening. So a period of Arctic chill has returned for several days, possibly weeks. The period of Arctic cold ahead does not disprove global warming any more than the period of mild was a definite product of it. Graphic explaining possible pattern changePosted Jan06, 2007 at 12:36 AMThis graphic (it's a PDF) is running with my weather column on Saturday explaining the factors in our mild winter weather pattern and what may be changing soon. Rainy system has an El Nino look to itPosted Oct17, 2006 at 06:29 PMHere is an update on rainfall amounts from the storm system that has moved across the southern U.S. Here is a map showing severe weather reports on Monday. This is the kind of southern stream system that seems like it might have El Nino's fingerprints on it. If the southern branch of the jet stream does get cranking like it does in many El Nino years, we may see many of these soggy storm systems ... or icy/snow storms if they catch some cold air later on. Amounts of rain in our area today (midnight-5 p.m.) include 0.79 inch in Roanoke and 1.18 inch in Blacksburg. It's El Nino!Posted Sep13, 2006 at 07:01 PM
As National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen Keighton noted at Tuesday night's Town Hall Meeting in Roanoke, the correlation of El Nino to events in our area is rather weak, but a stronger El Nino can drive the southern jet stream a bit farther north bringing precipitation-bearing storm systems through the winter. El Nino is likely to mean that the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season will continue to underperform, as the warmer waters in the Pacific focus storminess in that ocean and drive powerful upper level winds that rip apart the tops of developing tropical systems in the Atlantic. Forecast accuracy?Posted Aug22, 2006 at 03:00 PMI stumbled across a Web site called www.forecastadvisor.com that offers percentages of accuracy for forecasts from various entities for given locations over periods of a month and a year. I can't vouch one way or the other for this, but feel free to explore it and consider. It appears to show that most forecasts are about 80 percent accurate over time, which is generally the number I've seen most in research on modern forecast accuracy. Sometimes I get asked why I don't do a column comparing and rating weather forecasts from various organizations. One reason I will never do that, either online or in print, is because The Weather Channel is owned by Landmark Communications, Inc., which also owns The Roanoke Times. On the page where my twice-weekly weather columns appear online, you will see a Weather Channel forecast up top. But often I will refer to National Weather Service products, and both the column page and the blog page have links to the weather service's office in Blacksburg. I'll stick to writing about the weather itself and leave judgment of individual weather entities and forecasts to you, the reader. Dumbing down the weatherPosted Aug09, 2006 at 08:29 PMA TV weatherman in Houston no longer gives the dew point on his weather broadcasts ... and a newspaper columnist is applauding him. (Click here for the article) I'm aghast. I don't understand everything about the stock market ... but is that a good reason to quit reporting the Dow Jones average? The earned run average makes little sense to me, but should sportscasters never report it again when a pitcher enters the game? We're not going to dumb things down here. Last July 4, I wrote about the importance of the dew point: Click here and scroll down a few grafs to the 7/4/2005 entry entitled "The more heat, the less humidity" This same column went in the print editor of The Roanoke Times under the headline: "It's not the humidity, it's the dew point." Roanoke skyscapesPosted Jul08, 2006 at 10:35 PM
Back on June 28, I referred to some pretty storm clouds in the area. Here's a shot I took from the Martin Luther King Jr. pedestrian bridge in downtown Roanoke, looking west toward a thunderstorm near Salem. This storm fascinated me, because it's shape and color -- a dark blue thunderhead, backlit by the late-day sun with a distinct profile against an orange and pink sky -- reminded me of a mini-version of a Plains supercell. It wasn't one, but rather a pulse storm, blowing itself out in a rush of wind and rain that barely made it to downtown. But what a gorgeous evening sky it created! 
If you ever have any spectacular, newsworthy, interesting or just pretty shots of ongoing weather, please email me and we'll post it here, with full credit of course. The soaking begins ... and here's whyPosted Jun23, 2006 at 11:47 PMThe first of what likely will be several days of rain and thunderstorms in Southwest Virginia dumped some torrential rainfall amounts on some areas while just barely wetting the ground in others. Radar estimates show that parts of Henry County just south of Martinsville had the heaviest rain, with amounts near 3 inches. A similar amount appears to fallen near the Peaks of Otter, with 1-2 inches over parts of Montgomery County, southern Roanoke County and northern Franklin County. The areas with the heaviest rain also line up with where there were the most severe weather reports of high winds and large hail. We may do this again today (Saturday) ... and then again Sunday, Monday, etc. Different areas may get the downpours each day, and there could be some more localized damaging winds and hail in some of the heavier thunderstorm downdrafts. 
Keying the numbers on the map: (1) A slow moving front is expected to stall along the Appalachian Mountains for several days. This front will act as a focus for moisture, help provide lift for daily thunderstorm development, and also act as a guide wire for low pressure systems moving to the northeast, each providing more moisture and instability for storms. One hot night!Posted Jun21, 2006 at 07:19 PMThe temperature at Kearney, Nebraska, jumped from 70 degrees to 93 in less than hour Tuesday ... between 4 and 5 a.m! I'll let the National Weather Service at Hastings, Neb., linked here, explain the phenomenon of heat bursts. Weather service newsletterPosted May06, 2006 at 11:06 AMThe National Weather Service in Blacksburg puts out an online newsletter covering a wide variety of topics. The current newsletter, for spring-summer 2006 looks back at the winter just past, examines the new enhanced Fujita scale of tornado intensity (which I covered in an April 29 column), discusses severe weather and looks ahead to the summer and hurricane season. It's worth a read. In fact, the whole National Weather Service-Blacksburg Web site is worth a visit. We keep it permanently linked in the right margin here on the Weather Journal blog page for your convenience. Welcome to the Weather Journal blogPosted Apr18, 2006 at 02:26 PMWeather Journal began in late 2002 as something of an online blog ... an occasional discussion of weather, updated intermittently on Roanoke.com. When it started in The Roanoke Times as a twice-weekly column in late 2003, the online version followed suit: Two regular postings a week, with some updates in between as conditions necessitated. Today, we're returning to our roots in a sense with the launch of the Weather Journal blog on Roanoke.com. I will continue to post the regular twice-weekly columns, but also plan frequent, mostly short updates here on a wide variety of weather topics -- local, national, international, past, present and future. I hope this becomes a place online where people with any inkling of an interest in weather can come to find some interesting topics, including links to other articles and Web sites. There will also be room for you to make your own comments on whatever is being discussed. Bear with me, though, as I'm new to the blogging thing, and it might take some time to find my rhythm with it. |
About this blog
Kevin Myatt works on the copy desk for The Roanoke Times and is its principal weather geek, writing a weekly weather column and advising the newsroom on weather topics. He helps guide students on a storm chasing trip to the central U.S. each May and was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States." .....Advertisement.....
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