Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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It took most of July for the peak summer heat to ooze from the Western United States, across the Northern states, and into the East.

July ended up averaging half a degree below normal in Roanoke, largely the result of the odd late-month cool snap that featured a couple of days with highs in the low 70s.

But the heat is arriving in early August as high pressure builds in many layers of our atmosphere from the west. It will set up shop for at least the next week, possibly longer.

By peak summer heat, I don't necessarily mean that any one day will definitely be the hottest of the year. The hottest temperature so far this summer, which runs from June 1 to Aug. 31 in meteorological record-keeping, was 95 back on June 18.

We may well challenge, and possibly exceed, that mark on a day or two before this hot spell has ended. But what I mean by the peak summer heat, in this case, is that this will likely be our longest period of consistent temperatures in the 90s in Roanoke this summer.

Roanoke Regional Airport recorded high temperatures of 90 or above on five consecutive days from July 6 to July 10, our longest such stretch in 2007.

Friday marked our third consecutive day at or above 90. I would not be surprised if the current stretch extended to at least six consecutive days, or ended up as something like seven or eight days out of nine reaching at least 90. A well-placed thundershower may interrupt the afternoon heat a day or two.

By comparison, last summer's longest stretch of 90-degree weather was eight days, starting Aug. 22 and ending Aug. 29. From Aug. 20-29, nine days out of 10 were 90 or above, and it came within 1 degree of being a 10-day unbroken streak, with the high on Aug. 21 at 89.

What does not appear to be on the horizon, at least for now, is extreme heat. Most days through the next week will have highs in the low to mid 90s in Roanoke. While those temperatures are 3 to 8 degrees above normal, we probably won't see any day challenge 100, a mark not officially reached in Roanoke since 1999.

It's enough to be called a "hot spell," but probably not a "heat wave."

The high pressure aloft will also exacerbate the long-term dryness in most of Southwest Virginia. With warm, stable air building into upper layers of the atmosphere, showers and thunderstorms are somewhat less likely.

There will be a few localized exceptions to this on some days, as daytime heating may be able to overcome other factors to produce a few scattered showers and thunderstorms.

This happened in Tazewell County on Thursday, as a small but ferocious thunderstorm poured enough rain on a mountainside to create a mudslide across U.S. 460 and wash a large boulder into a campground.

So the next several days will feature classic midsummer weather: Hot and mostly dry, with a few hit-and-miss thunderstorms, any of which may pack a short-lived but very local wallop.

By next weekend, a cold front may be able to slip into the area and break the hot spell.

Looking farther down the road, mid- to late-August is when both the hurricane season and fall-like systems in the Arctic regions typically begin to show signs of life.

Major developments in either the tropics or the tundra could signal whether this hot and dry weather will stretch into autumn.