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Weather Journal

with Kevin Myatt

Sunday potential fizzles; cold air aloft may trigger storms today

Posted Jun30, 2008 at 01:04 AM

gretnastormsmall.jpg

Sunday was certainly not the storm day it could have been, with a strong cold front pressing in and an unseasonble southward dip in the jet stream, bringing both cold air and strong winds to the higher layers of the atmosphere. We were lacking some instability, as clouds held the temperatures down in many areas, and while it was pretty humid with dew points in the 60s, it could have been more sticky with dew points in the 70s. Still, a few decent storms managed to fire. If you look on the Storm Prediction Center's map of storm reports for Sunday, you will notice a blue dot and a green dot in Southwest Virginia. The blue dot is for a report of tree damage from wind near Callaway, while the green dot is for 3/4 inch hail near Penhook, both in Franklin County. I was out watching the storms Sunday afternoon, and shot this photo, looking west from Gretna, showing this same storm over eastern Franklin County as it approached northern Pittsylvania County. The storm, which showed weak rotation on radar at times, did have something of a layered, rounded structure, and spun out quite a few cloud-to-ground lightning strokes. If instability had been greater and moisture thicker, we might have seen serious stuff.

Don't be surprised if a few more storms develop today as unseasonably cold air flows in to many layers of the atmosphere above the surface, allowing any remnant moisture to bubble into it with daytime heating. With the freezing level so low, hail will be a possibility with any storm that develops today. The rest of the week looks mostly dry, and rather cool for this time of year, with some lows in the 50s by Tuesday morning.

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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."

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