Kevin Myatt's Weather Journal at roanoke.com

Oh, I grew up wanting to be one. When I was a gawky kid in Arkansas, I got a reputation in elementary school for being able to out-forecast the local TV weatherman, who was really just an often-tipsy DJ and bad comedian. I grew up on a steady diet of tornado warnings -- and those of you from the Midwest know about those times when the television is nothing but weathermen for hours pointing at hook echoes while the news reporters chase disappearing subdivisions. I saw SIX tornadoes myself between 1974 and 1999. Darn near drove into one.

But the Lord had other plans for me, as newspaper things just started happening. Like "accidentally" having to take a journalism class my sophomore year of high school when other classes were full. Like having a sportswriting job fall in my lap days after my high school graduation. Like trying my hardest once to leave newspapers behind once and for all only to have a small-town newspaper publisher offer me an editor job at a bank parking lot. The newspaper life is a calling. I could more easily run from twisters than from the ink in my blood.

This career turn was all for the better for me. Though meteorologists have been glamorized in recent years by the movie "Twister" and by being labeled the "sexiest men" of certain cities, the more likely destination for someone with a degree in meteorology is sitting behind a radar screen in a windowless office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Don’t get me wrong: These folks are often heroes, right next to firemen and policemen. If you don’t believe that, compare tornado fatality figures between the last 10 years with any 10-year period before 1960. Those nameless faces looking for clashing colors on a Doppler radar screen are saving lots of lives. But I like to be outside more. That’s probably why I took up hiking. (See my hiking page on roanoke.com)

As a journalist and editor for 14 years, I got to write plenty about weather events and lots of other memorable things, too. But my passion for weather still stalks me, and finally caught up with me here in Roanoke. I got myself labeled as the newsroom weather geek -- or "weather guru" as What’s On Your Mind columnist Tom Angleberger somewhat mystically calls me. Even after I moved to advertising in the fall, I’ve still been an unofficial weather consultant. And now, they’re giving me a column online.

So what the heck is this all about? The truth is, whatever I want it to be. We’re going to talk about the weather -- we’re not going to do anything about it, we’re just going to talk about it. Past, present and future weather. This site will evolve into whatever we want to make it. And largely whatever you want us to make it.

I’m sure I’ll be hearing from some of you as the days go along. There’s something of a weather geek in almost all of us.

As a certified weather geek, I patrol weather sources on the Internet that normal folk fear to tread. Or rather, don’t know to tread. Or rather, don’t’ care to tread. Or rather, don’t know exists. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and more often when weather events warrant, I’ll attempt to boil some of this down for you, with a little fun and flavor.

Winter hangs on

Presidents' Day ice storm and big melt

Why a computer can't forecast the weather

How our New Year's winter began

Opening Journal entries

Kevin Myatt's

WEATHER JOURNAL

March 13, 2003, 1:25 p.m.

KABOOM!

As a cold front slides through the area this afternoon and evening, we could see our first significant thunderstorms of the season. Maybe some scattered high wind gusts and small hail as the cool front bumps into these 70-degree temperatures we're enjoying.

Get used to it, this is what spring is about ... warm days and occasional thunder. Some indications the middle of the country in particular could have a few rounds of severe thunderstorms in the near future. So quickly the sleet and snow seems to be so far behind us.

March 12, 2003, 10:55 a.m.

STICK A FORK IN IT

No snow Thursday. Instead, a mild spring rain, maybe even thunder. The low is tracking west of us, putting us in the "warm sector" where spring rains lie. Any cold stuff will be relegated to the backside, places like the upper Midwest that have been largely snow-starved this season.

A few flurries Tuesday morning may very well have been our last snowflakes of the season. There's always a danger in declaring a winter season to be over, but honestly, any snow from now on would be a fluke.

Flukes do happen, as late as early April at Roanoke's elevation and into May at higher elevations. The only possible hint of anything like that on the horizon would be near the first of spring, when there may be some colder air and a possible low pressure system on the East Coast, but right now it looks like this winter -- our first "real" winter in half a decade -- is history.

The weekend looks wonderful, by the way. Enjoy it.

March 10, 2003, 11:15 a.m.

WINTER'S LAST STAND?

This week will be colder than the wonderful weekend we just enjoyed. Tonight we will see some temperatures in the 20s, maybe even teens in protected valleys, and then a couple of reinforcing cold shots through the week.

There will be two storm systems to watch, one on Tuesday, one in the Thursday-Friday time frame. The Tuesday system is looking more and more by the minute like a few flurries or sprinkles. Computer models are having a hard time focusing on the Thursday-Friday storm. Gut call is some rain for us, maybe mountain snow, and then a more substantial snow event in New England. There is a slight chance we could get a decent snow from the late week storm.

If we don't get accumulating snow from either of these systems, I say the snow part of our winter is over. It looks like the subtropcial jet stream is finally going to win out and we're going to warm up, albeit gradually, over the next few weeks. That's usually what happens this time of year; it's called spring. That doesn't mean get ready to hit the pool next week. Even a typical spring has its cold snaps, and even average early spring weather is pretty chilly.

I think the spring we are about to see will be real close to normal ... lots of mild to warm sunny days, with a fast-moving rainmaker every three to five days. A really nice spring.

The occasional small rainstorms would be ideal -- April showers, if you will -- because we are no longer in need of huge reservoir-filling storms. But we also don't want to lapse back into the drought pattern that has been commonplace for three years. What's left of El Nino may still energize the subtropical jet stream. The hope is that the Midwest and West will actually get more rain and snow, seeing as many of those areas have experienced a severe winter drought.

Our weather action usually slows down in spring because we are not in a prime severe weather area ... though don't tell the folks in Bedford that after last April's tornado. A lot of the weather attention focuses west where tornado season will soon be in full stride. I've been there and done that. I hope to tell you soon about one particularly intense tornado episode I experienced four years ago.

March 5, 2003, 8:15 a.m.

SPRING TODAY, GONE NEXT WEEK?

West to southwest winds this afternoon and a little sunshine should bring us a touch of spring -- maybe 70 degrees (at least 60, more likely 65-68).

And there will be those who will insist that winter must be over and spring has arrived.

Signs loom on the horizon that the "zonal" jet stream flow -- west to east across the nation with no dips, bringing mild weather -- will buckle again by the middle of next week. Ominous signs that the St. Patrick's Day to first of spring time frame could even bring a plunge of Arctic air.

Snow? Certainly the potential for storminess when the jet stream buckles. In March, when seasons are trying to change, any storms that form can get an extra dose of turbulence and turn into monsters. Remember March 14, 1993?

But in the meantime, enjoy this afternoon's warmth. Arctic outbreaks or not, the sun is getting higher in the sky and the days are getting longer, which means the overall trend will be toward spring. But we might slide back into a winter a couple of times before the flowers bloom.

Talk weather to Kevin. Click here.