Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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A strange April is about to get even stranger.

A low-pressure system tracking across the southern United States is expected to deepen rapidly off the East Coast this weekend. The result will be a potentially historic nor'easter that will bring wind-whipped heavy rain and snow to a wide area.

Had this storm come in early February when it was frigid, school would have been out for half the month and we might still have had patches of snow on the first day of spring.

Coming now, it will be an unseasonably chilly, windy, rainy mess for us ... and we might see at least a little mid-April snow on the back side of the storm Sunday night.

The mountains of West Virginia are likely to get a solid dose of heavy snow as northwest winds behind the storm carry cold winds from Canada across the Great Lakes and then up the western mountain slopes, squeezing out the moisture Sunday and Monday.

Farther north, inland areas from Pennsylvania to Maine probably will get a heaping helping of heavy, wet snow, perhaps more than a foot in some locations. That's the kind of snow that can cause tree damage, especially trees that budded or leafed prematurely during the March warmth.

Along the coast, beach erosion could become a big concern as strong northeast winds -- hence the name "nor'easter" -- to the north of the storm heap waves of water and fling them against the shoreline from the Chesapeake Bay to Newfoundland.

Hurricanes get a lot of publicity for coastal flooding and beach erosion, but the constant pounding of a nor'easter often causes equal or greater damage than a hurricane, and usually over a much longer section of shoreline.

Monday's Boston Marathon should be interesting, as the runners are expected to face stiff northeast winds, temperatures hovering near 40 and sheets of rain.

This storm will likely put an exclamation point on what is already going to be an April that will be long remembered for its cold.

Crops ranging from peaches to blueberries to wheat have been badly damaged throughout much of the central and eastern United States by last weekend's hard freeze. The level of damage was set up by a record warm March in many areas that accelerated the maturation of those plants.

Below-normal temperatures are likely to continue in our area through at least the end of next week and maybe beyond. Normal temperatures this time of year are in the mid- to upper 60s for highs and the low to mid-40s for lows.

As a reader pointed out to me, this month has a good chance to achieve what would be a first: an April with a cooler average temperature than the March that preceded it.

Roanoke's average temperature through the first 12 days of this month was 49.1 degrees. Recall that March's average temperature was 53.2 degrees. (I listed this as 53.3 degrees at least once, but the correct figure is a tenth lower than that.) So April has a lot of ground to make up.

It appears nearly certain that the next several days will have temperatures well below normal, keeping the month's average temperature low and maybe even dropping it a tad.

Also in range is the record coldest April, 51.0 degrees, set in 1961. That was also the closest that Roanoke has gotten since airport weather records began in 1948 to having an April colder than the March before it -- March's average that year was 50.1 degrees.

Following the warmest March on record with the coldest April on record would be an amazing feat.