Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Severe weather and tropical weather have dominated Weather Journal the past four months, with the drought as a constant drumbeat in the background.

There has been little time to take a look at the bigger picture, as to what this month or the fall season may hold.

Let's do that now, as calm and mild weather settles in, possibly for many days.

First, here's what's not happening: El Nino and La Nina.

Broadly speaking, the historical tendency is that El Nino -- the irregularly occurring warming of equatorial waters in the Pacific -- brings warm and wet weather to the southern half of the United States, while La Nina -- the irregularly cooling of those same waters -- brings warm and dry weather to the same area.

These tendencies can be affected or sometimes even overcome by various other atmospheric and oceanic factors elsewhere. That's why they're tendencies, not certainties.

Not having either ongoing, though, means that there may not be a tendency toward either the wet or dry extremes as we move through fall.

There also has been no prolonged period of widespread, extremely hot weather in the United States during the previous summer.

Last year, so much heat had built up that it was hard to dispense. As a result, summerlike heat kept rebuilding deep into autumn, producing a very late rash of 90-degree temperatures in Southwest Virginia a week and a half deep into October.

Though periods of above-normal temperatures will probably occur, such an outbreak of extreme heat seems unlikely given a run of mostly normal temperatures since one week of extreme heat in early June.

Similarly, we have yet to see a true intrusion of Arctic air. Though there could be scattered frost this morning, there's no real obvious sign of such a blast of cold air on the horizon, either.

So with no real push toward hot, cold, wet or dry, that leaves one likelihood for the rest of October: normal.

Normal seems abnormal when it comes to our topsy-turvy weather, but as of now it appears to be our best bet for the next few weeks.

Normal in October, for Roanoke, means highs in the low 70s and lows near 50 to start the month, gradually dropping to the low 60s for highs and low 40s for lows by Halloween. Check out the temperatures now and those forecast into the weekend, and we're pretty much right on target.

If I were leaning one way or the other, I'd say the month will tilt a little toward being warmer and drier than normal. Until we get into some kind of completely new weather pattern where rain becomes a regular occurrence, we should expect generally dry weather. And dry weather this time of year tends to lead to warm afternoons even if the mornings are cool.

Things to watch for that could change expectations for the month include:

n A renewed burst of tropical systems that could bring warmer and wetter weather;

n The development of a southern branch of the jet stream, which could bring in wet storm systems from the Pacific; or

n Arctic air massing in Canada and moving south, which could bring a hard freeze or even the season's first snowflakes.

Yes, we have entered the first month of the season when snow is at least a reasonable possibility in our region, though it's usually limited to a few flakes in the highest elevations very late in the month.

Speculating and prognosticating about that much-loved, much-maligned four-letter "s" word, or the lack of it, will likely dominate Weather Journal in the months ahead.