Visit To Boys' Home

It's always a lot of fun to take road trips. In fact, it's one of my favorite parts of the job.

Today, I had the opportunity to talk weather with some smart young men at Boys' Home in Covington.

In the photo (right) you can see us making a "cloud in a bottle" using ordinary pop bottle and pump. This is a visual experiment that explains the water cycle, cloud formation...and builds muscles. :) as you pressurize the bottle.

The students asked many great questions about weather balloons, global warming and how animals can predict the weather (one of my favorite topics).

The Boys' Home is actually one of our newest WeatherBug partners. Through grants, they have purchased a live weather station and motion camera to track weather conditions from outside the Covington city limits.

That's the best part about WeatherBug is that we're able to see what's happening in neighborhoods across the region. Other media outlets can only show you what's happening at the airports using the National Weather Service stations (the closest one to Covington is in Hot Springs, many miles away), which data is updated once an hour.

WeatherBug weather stations send data our to our computer every second, allowing us to get real-time temperature, wind and rainfall data instantly. Not to mention you can get the data on your computer as well by clicking on your closest WeatherBug station.

If you'd like even more information about WeatherBug or would like to purchase one for your school, business or perhaps even your home, click here.

--Meteorologist Brent Watts

2 Tornadoes Confirmed in Thursday Night Storms

An EF-1 tornado was confirmed today by the National Weather Service in Blacksburg. Below is the report from the storm survey.


HENRY/FRANKLIN CO. TORNADO: Was classified as an EF1 with winds of 86 to 95mph. The twister had a one mile path with a width of 75 yards. Numerous trees were downed and four homes damaged. The tornado touched down near state route 886 in Henry County at 8:00pm, and lifted at routes 618 and 632 in Franklin County.

PITTSYLVANIA CO. TORNADO: Was classified as an EF1 with winds of 86 to 95mph. The tornado touched down on Gretna Road/Highway 40, with trees down and damage to homes in the area. The National Weather Service survey team is still compiling data and will release the width and length of the tornado path soon.

It was all associated with a low pressure system riding along a cold front. This low caused twisting of the winds in the clouds. Numerous tornadoes were spotted across the south. Some of the most compelling video came from an Alabama security camera.




This is proof that a car is NEVER a place to be. In fact, a man caught in a tornado in North Carolina was killed when his car was flipped in the high winds.

If you're in a car and see/hear a tornado coming. Get out of the car and into a sturdy structure. As a last result, lay flat in a ditch and cover your head, but be aware of flash flooding. You don't want to be caught in a ditch full when it becomes a raging stream.


Thanks for all the emails on live-streaming of the weather cut-ins online. I'll try and post a couple of those on the next blog, along with a story of Robin and his Empenada. You'll get a kick out of that one.


--Meteorologist Brent Watts

Tornado in Halifax County

With all of the devastation this week in eastern Virginia, we must not forget the EF-1 tornado that occurred in Halifax county, near Virgilina, the same afternoon. 

 Here's the storm survey done by folks at the National Weather Service in Blacksburg. I've highlighted some of the basic info.

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BLACKSBURG 

215 PM EDT TUE APR 29 2008  ...STORM DAMAGE IN HALIFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA CAUSED BY EF1 TORNADO...  A NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STORM SURVEY FOUND THAT STORM DAMAGE THAT OCCURRED IN HALIFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA IN THE TOWN OF VIRGILINA MONDAY AFTERNOON WAS CAUSED BY AN EF1 TORNADO.  WINDS IN THE STORM WERE ESTIMATED TO BE BETWEEN 86 AND 109 MPH. THE STORM WAS ON THE GROUND FROM APPROXIMATELY 110 TO 115 PM. THE INITIAL DAMAGE STARTED JUST SOUTH AND WEST OF THE INTERSECTIONS OF HIGHWAYS 96 AND 49. THIS ON THE WESTERN EDGE OF THE TOWN OF VIRGILINA. THE TORNADO WAS ON THE GROUND FOR APPROXIMATELY ONE MILE TRAVELING TO THE NORTHEAST. SPORADIC DAMAGE OCCURRED FURTHER NORTHEAST ON GILLS MOUNTAIN ROAD FROM STRAIGHT LINE WINDS. AT THE WIDEST POINT...THE TORNADO WAS 240 YARDS WIDE.  6 HOMES WERE DAMAGED...AND NUMEROUS LARGE TREES WERE DOWNED AND SNAPPED.  THE NATIONAL WEATHER WANTS TO EXTEND IT THANKS TO THE VIRGINIA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT...AND HALIFAX COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT FOR THEIR ASSISTANCE IN THE STORM SURVEY.

---END OF RELEASE---

Tornadoes are common in Virginia, in fact the state typically sees around 6-8 per year. This one was rather wide, and there was never a Tornado warning issued.

Virgilina is near the North Carolina border, and the nearest Doppler radar is in Floyd county (See Map Below). Since the earth is curved the radar beam is shooting too high into the cloud, detecting circulation near the earth's surface can be challenging. You can also see on the map where the next closest NWS radar site is, in Wakefield VA. We'll cover this topic on a future edition of Beyond the Forecast.

View Larger Map

We are so lucky more people didn't get killed out of either of the nearly 10 tornadoes that touched down Monday. Time of day played a major part. Had people been asleep at the time, we'd probably be looking at many more injuries and fatalities. 

With this tragedy on people's minds, there's no better time to prepare for severe weather in southwest Virginia. Tornadoes CAN HAPPEN HERE. They have in the past and will again. The mountains offer little shelter from these massive creatures, and it better to have an evacuation plan ready now, than figure out where you'd go as the storm is minutes away. 

Here are some ideas on where to hide, along with a history of Virginia's tornadoes.

Be safe and welcome May. --Meteorologist Brent Watts

Tornados Strike Eastern VA

So far this evening (Monday) at least 3 tornados have been confirmed by the National Weather Service south of Richmond, extending east toward Suffolk and Norfolk. 

The same front that produced benefitial rain for southwest Virginia, ran into some very unstable air as it moved east. The result? A tornado outbreak that left 1 dead and over 200 injured. Looking at the photos below (WTKR-TV) it's a miracle their weren't more that were hurt. 

• Compared with other States, Virginia ranks number 29 for frequency of Tornadoes
  
• We saw more tornados in Virginia today than we did the entire year of 2007. 

Here's the breakdown from last year. 

• Total number of tornados (2)
• Total people killed (0)
• Total damage estimated ($80,000)

-Meteorologist Brent Watts

Holding On To The Sun

Those that are close to me know I love photography, especially nature. It just so happens my wife sent me an email with some great photos of people "holding the sun." Obviously, an impossible feat made possible through the eyes of the camera lens.

• By the way, holding the sun will get you burned. It's our "closest" star (93 million miles away), but the surface of the sun has a temperature of  5800 degrees. That's  actually about 16 times hotter than boiling water. The center of the sun has a temperature of 10million degrees.  
• Send in your "Holding the Sun" photos and we'll try to use them on the air.
• Click here for More tips on Weather Photography --Meteorologist Brent Watts

Rainy Days are Here, Again...

Man this song brings back so many memories from high school. No, not because I dressed up like a bumble bee and tap danced on-stage during the school play. Umm, it was actually a ladybug costume. But who's counting.

Seriously, this song from my high school years is a fitting now. Today I heard a youngster (under 30) say, "I wish it would just stop raining so much." In return I said, "do you like water to drink?" He said "yes, but we have a well at our house."

Hello, a refresher course about the water cycle: Precipitation, Evaporation, Condensation. Precipitation.....

Basically, to get water into your well, you have to have water in the ground. With "No Rain," we have no water.

So far we have a surpluss of rain for the month of April, but we haven't put a dent in the deficit from the past months. This week on Skytracker 7 Weather, we'll look at the rain deficit and what makes this year different from 2007.

Soak up the rain. --Meteorologist Brent Watts