Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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The grass is crusty and the ground is dusty in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

It's been a wonderfully cool August, especially compared with the torturous heat of a year ago, but we still need rain, folks. We've had only 0.07 inch in Roanoke so far this month, and just a quarter-inch in Blacksburg.

I usually wait until winter to draw out possible scenarios on systems that could bring precipitation our way several days out.

But, after Wednesday's juicy low-pressure system went mostly south of us, we are in such need of rain that I'm going to paint a scenario, plausible but far from certain, that could bring us substantial rain about a week from now.

Just northeast of the Caribbean, there is a tropical disturbance. Several computer forecast models take this disturbance toward Florida next week as high pressure builds over the Atlantic.

The disturbance may well become a tropical depression, tropical storm or even a hurricane. Fay is the next name on the list.

OK, so this might not be such good news for an unfortunate section of Southeast coastline, and there's always a risk with tropical systems of getting too much rain too fast, even far inland.

I'm not wishing a hurricane on anyone, nor do I want to reprise the flood of '85.

But it is a fact that many areas of the Southeast, up through the Carolinas into Virginia, depend on tropical systems for a certain amount of their annual rainfall, and the lack of such storms in recent years has contributed to the drought.

It's often true in weather that one man's dread is another man's bread.

The ideal scenario would be for a tropical storm or weak hurricane to miss the most populated and built-up areas of the coast, then rain a lot on inland drought areas while moving fast enough to not drown anybody in 20-plus inches of rain.

High pressure over the Atlantic may be well situated in a week's time to curve a tropical system in our general direction. Should this high remain in place, its clockwise flow could funnel Gulf moisture through the region for several days.

As I said, this is a plausible scenario, but there are many points at which it could go awry.

A better plan would be for low-pressure systems such as Wednesday's to start becoming a habit, pulling their slugs of Gulf moisture a bit farther northward.

A regular dose of 1-inch rains at steady intervals for months is really the only way to rout the drought.