Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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• Coldest morning of winter so far likely across much of Southwest Virginia; Tuesday precipitation looking doubtful
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It will be getting milder this week. But we may have to reconsider the length of the mild spell. There are a few signs that cold air will build in Canada, and could come crashing down soon after New Year's Day. The National Weather Service in Blacksburg even mentioned a possible snow threat early next week in one of its discussions.

For now, after one more chilly day, enjoy the taste of spring that will send 2004 out. 2005 will have its own weather surprises, and I'm sure we won't have to wait very long to find one.

After all, Brownsville, Texas, had a white Christmas and Syracuse, N.Y., didn't.

Newport News got a foot of snow on Sunday but Williamsburg 30 miles away got half an inch. Another 30 miles west -- nothing.

Don't tell me weather isn't wild, especially winter weather.

South Texas' Christmas Eve snowstorm is the stuff of legend. It's ridiculous, really. With 4-12 inches, places like Victoria, Corpus Christi and Galveston saw more snow in one evening than they had in many decades combined. Brownsville hadn't seen any measurable snow in 109 years. People were born, raised families and died at a ripe old age without seeing snowflakes in parts of south Texas.

And it happened on Christmas Eve! What kind of melodrama is that?

The funny thing is that some computer models a week or two back actually picked up on the possibility of a South Texas snowstorm. They didn't hang onto it, as the idea seemed so farfetched that it was easily dismissed.

Then, the pesky storm, after tossing a little sleet and snow on places like New Orleans and Mobile, ended up making a move up the East Coast after all. This had been debated and argued by weather folks until it looked certain the Arctic high pressure would crush it, or drive it so far south it crossed Florida and sailed harmlessly out to sea.

Instead, it managed to clip Tidewater with a narrow band of intensely heavy snow before scraping the Northeast. The cold, dry air mass parked over us cut the snow off between Richmond and Tidewater. Just enough moisture mixed with just enough cold produced big-time snow and pummeled the part of our state that typically sees the least.

So New Year's Day will find Roanoke trailing Victoria, Texas, and Newport News by a foot in total snow. So far, it's a shutout.

And it's likely to stay that way until mid-January, if not later.

We're going back to a pattern where the jet stream dips in the West, bringing cold air and storminess to the Rockies and the Pacific coast, while riding north in the East. A high pressure ridge is building from the southeast. This will bring warmer than normal temperatures and mostly dry weather by later this week, with a few intervening rounds of showers. It will keep the cold air bottled up in Canada, and in the western states, where usually soggy Seattle and Portland could eventually join Tidewater and south Texas as the new American winter wonderlands.

This pattern has a real possibility of getting stuck for a while. A central Atlantic high is clogging up the works, and a fast jet stream out of the Pacific may become so strong as to cause any fronts that make it through to come out of the cool West rather than the frigid North. Some 60s are nearly certain, and I would not be surprised to see a 70-degree day sometime between now and the new year. Heck, snowy Brownsville could clip 90 in this pattern.

It's great for outdoor activities, unless those activities involve snow. It's a good thing we've had lots of really cold weather for the ski resorts to make snow, because they're going to need every slushy inch of it to get through this warmup.

But for those who would dare to write off a winter like this, I bring 1959-60 as Exhibit A. That winter was Roanoke's biggest or second biggest snow year, depending on the source, producing some 62 inches of snow.

On Jan. 1, 1960, Roanoke had not yet had any snow. By February, not quite 5 inches had fallen.

You do the math. Winter isn't over until it's over, though it's probably over in Brownsville until 2113.