Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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• Winter trying again to show up with snow
• We got graupel, but not on official record
• Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
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• Many looking past mild, quiet week toward possibly wild weekend
• Sprinkles or flurries possible Tuesday, but maybe something bigger for the weekend?
• For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
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Perhaps you have a gotten a present before that really interested you, but then you learned you had to put it together yourself.

You poured the pieces out of a box and wondered, "How am I going to put this together?" And then, as you got into it, you found some screws were missing or some pieces didn't quite fit together.

That's sort of what is happening with a possible storm system that could affect us over the weekend, one that could have been -- and, really, still could be, if some things change -- our first significant winter storm of the season.

The winter storm assembly kit is in place. Several times this week, computer forecast models were showing what it might look like fully assembled as it moved up the East Coast on Sunday and Monday.

But as we get closer to that time, it looks like the pieces are not going to fit quite right. Or, at least, the winter storm is not going to get put together in time for the snow lovers of Southwest Virginia to play in it.

Two different cold swirls of wind high in the atmosphere -- upper-level disturbances, as meteorologists like to call them -- are moving in our general direction.

One is coming from the west across the southern U.S., the other from the northwest across the Ohio Valley.

If these systems combine forces early enough, a large low pressure system could form near the Gulf of Mexico and then move up the East Coast.

This would sweep both Gulf and Atlantic moisture inland over our region.

The strong low pressure system that rained on us Thursday night is moving across southeastern Canada. Its counterclockwise rotation will pull colder air from Canada across us this weekend.

Big low moving up the coast, moisture sweeping inland, cold air from Canada -- it's often a recipe for snow in our area.

But it appears the two disturbances will not connect until they're east of our area. As it stands now, a strong low is expected to form somewhere off the coast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., or maybe Virginia Beach, not near the Gulf.

The storm will likely wrap up north of our region, making it more of an issue for locations between Washington and Maine rather than Southwest Virginia.

We might still get some light snow on Sunday. But a big snowfall appears to be unlikely, unless a lot more Gulf moisture gets involved and it can stay cold enough.

The only thing certain about weather is its uncertainty. It's still just close enough to being a winter storm scenario to bear watching to see if anything changes with the timing.

It looks like we may start playing this "will-it-snow, won't-it-snow" game on a regular basis. By the end of next week, another system may put us through the same motions.

And beyond that, there are increasing signals that the last 10 days or so of January may feature a colder pattern with the potential for storm systems to move across from the Pacific.

I am increasingly convinced that winter will bother to show up this year.

So, even if this one doesn't get put together right, there may well be more boxes to open, with a new confusing array of pieces in each one.