Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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You've heard the football expression that a tie is like kissing your sister.

Well, the battle of atmospheric patterns over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that I wrote about last week has, more or less, played to a tie.

The blocking high pressure over Greenland, which could help set up a wintry pattern, and the strong low over the northern Pacific just south of Alaska, which has swept in milder air, have canceled each other out.

The result has been somewhat colder weather, and even a wet storm system over the last couple of days that brought lots of rain to Southwest Virginia and a little ice to higher elevations, but no real winter storms.

Losing the strong low in the northern Pacific is going to allow high pressure to build near the West Coast, and this will push even colder weather our way next week. There could be one or two very cold days ahead.

But, with the high pressure over Greenland also diminishing, the pattern may look a lot like late November and early December, when several cold fronts pushed through, but it stayed mostly dry. Cold air masses would stay a day or two before slipping away.

Any snow threat the next week to 10 days will depend on relatively weak, hard-to-time disturbances zipping in from the west, or Alberta clippers diving in from the northwest.

Pucker up, snow lovers and sun seekers. The weather pattern is not great for either of you.