Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

John Mosteller of Southwestern Lawn & Landscaping clears up snow Wednesday at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. Unlike Roanoke, Blacksburg has had a little accumulating snow this winter.

Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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The three-act comedy that is the 2008-09 winter is about to go to its second intermission.

I say comedy because, though some of Roanoke's biggest snow fans find little to laugh about, missing snowfall in weird ways time and time again can't really be termed a weather tragedy.

It has become comical seeing how many ways the atmosphere can figure out to deny the Roanoke Valley its inches of snow.

And I say three acts because we've already had two multiweek rounds dominated by Arctic cold -- late November through early December, and again the past two and a half weeks -- split by an intermission of milder weather.

After a period of mild to warm weather the next week to 10 days, it appears likely based on some long-range signals that another round of cold will take hold about Valentine's Day.

You don't really think we're going to go from now to April without a few more scenes of the "will it snow, won't it snow, how will it miss this time" slapstick routine, do you?

Roanoke Times staff writer Jeff Sturgeon wrote an article back in December asking some Roanoke Valley residents about their "snow envy," spurred by four consecutive winters that could be described as "one-hit wonders" ... only one significant snowfall in each of them.

That snow envy has grown into deep-rooted snow angst now that many weeks of cold weather have netted little snow in the Roanoke Valley, while puny storm systems dish out copious flakes to only those Southwest Virginia spots that always get them.

Roanoke sits at four-tenths of an inch of snowfall, that coming way back on Nov. 18. Blacksburg has squeezed out about 8 inches from several small snows. Rick Post in Wytheville e-mailed me to say he has measured more than 17 inches this winter.

Meanwhile, some Roanoke snow fans are joining the valley's many sun seekers in pleading for an early spring just to end the madness.

But there are really only two poetic ways this winter can end:

(1) With an abundantly snowy period or big snowstorm to defy the winter's trend, or

(2) To go ahead and finish up as the least snowy season on record in Roanoke, which it will if 1.9 inches isn't measured at the city's official snow measurement site, the WDBJ (Channel 7) studio.

My contribution to the upcoming winter respite, and to the sanity of Star City snow fans: I'm not going to mention the word "snow" in any of my next three columns. We'll see if the word is needed after Feb. 13.