Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Neither the setting nor the plot of our weather drama has changed appreciably in two months. It may have lulled you to sleep.

But there's some movement off stage that could signal a scene change, maybe even a progression into an entirely new act.

Early this week, we'll have another in the lenghty series of low pressure areas move northeast out of the Southwest toward the Great Lakes.

Again, we'll be safely on the mild side of this booger. South winds ahead of the low will pull in plenty of Gulf moisture for copious rain (you may be seeing some as you're reading this), and we might even hear a rumble of thunder. The low will pass far to our northwest, eventually dragging a cold front through that will dry things out and give us gusty winds out of the west. It will then get noticeably colder, but not frigid.

Then comes another low pressure area for the weekend. But, with increasing consensus, major computer forecasting models are painting a different picture for this storm.

It develops in the northwest Gulf of Mexico, and travels northeast, roughly over us. Then, somewhere off the Atlantic Coast from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod, a surface low deepens, while an upper level low hangs somewhere near us.

Just looking out the window, it may not appear to be all that much different for Southwest Virginia from the umpteen other soggy storms that have plagued us this fall. Farther north, though, from Pennsylvania into the Northeast, it could be a full-fledged winter storm.

It's what happens after this low passes that could be important for us. As the low moves toward Newfoundland, it will begin swirling cold air into the eastern United States.

If the cold air becomes entrenched by next week, whatever storms follow the weekend low could be interesting to watch. The jet stream, possibly in a new configuration following the weekend storm and a building high in the western states, may well carry subsequent storms farther south than we've been seeing. Start digging them into the Gulf and up the Eastern Seaboard with cold air wedged in, and ice and snow become possible.

Questions that remain unanswerable are whether the shift after the weekend storm becomes a new pattern that will last weeks, or whether it's a temporary shift that will snap back in a few days.

Also, how much cold air will become available? Though Canada is plenty cold and largely snow-covered, the bulk of the really frigid Arctic air is on the other side of the pole. Perhaps this makes a move our way a bit later in the season.

A wholesale pattern change to a cold and stormy one that lingers would have major implications on our winter season, now that we're moving deeper in December. A pattern that gets stuck on cold and stormy can quickly pile up the snow and ice if it arrives in mid-December instead of mid-November, when the same pattern might play out with lots of cold rain and little or no snow for us.

Is that what's about to happen? The weekend storm is not etched in stone yet, much less any pattern shifting after that.

But the potential for the weekend storm offers one piece of increasing evidence that our mild autumn pattern may, before long, exit stage right.