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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April overachieved in bringing showers.

April averages 3.61 inches of rain for Roanoke. After downpours Sunday and Monday, 4.94 inches have fallen this month. No more is expected today, so April will most likely end 1¹₃ inches above normal in rainfall.

It is Roanoke's wettest month relative to normal since October finished more than 2 inches above normal. It's only our second above-normal rainfall month in the past 17 and only the sixth in the past 28. So that's why we can have some good rains and still officially be in a drought.

The national Drought Monitor is released each Thursday. I will post a link to that from my blog after it comes out. I suspect that we will pull back from moderate drought to just abnormally dry because of this week's rain -- maybe even out of drought altogether in some areas.

Saturday will likely bring May's first rain and storms with a new cold front, but the rain probably will not be as heavy as what occurred earlier this week.

While the cold front early this week was good news for our drought, it caused destructive tornadoes in southeast Virginia. We'll take a closer look at those in Saturday's Weather Journal.