Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Fronts that get stuck are often more trouble than fronts that push through quickly.

Fast-moving fronts bring a lot of wind and often some kind of fast-moving squall line. But it's the fronts that linger around that so often lead to the most damaging weather.

The cold front that slipped south early Friday got stuck from about Martinsville to Floyd to Dublin to north of Bluefield in southern West Virginia. Folks just south and west of that line, where it was warmest, saw several rounds of severe storms march through, most notable the one that spawned destructive tornadoes in Pulaski and Draper.

A stalled front often acts to guide storms through a location one after another behind each other rather than sweeping through the whole region once like a squall line does pushed by a front.

A stalled front also creates more spin from hot and cold air intersecting than storms can absorb with their updrafts, leading to rotation in the storm that can support large hail, long-lived downdrafts of straight-line wind, and, as we saw Friday, potentially tornadoes.

The fast-moving front is usually being pushed by winds aloft all moving in the same direction, creating much less spin than would occur with winds moving in different directions.

But, like everything in weather, these are not hard-set rules. Stalled fronts sometimes result in rather benign weather, while speedy fronts can cause widespread severe weather outbreaks, depending on numerous factors.

We saw the effects of a stalled front Friday and Saturday. We'll experience what a cold front moving in rapidly from the west can do late today. More storms are likely; some could be severe. Straight-line winds appear to be more likely than tornadoes.

Weather Journal runs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.