Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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• We got graupel, but not on official record
• Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
• Forecast for Weather Journal: Partly print, with frequent Internet
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• For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
• Coldest morning of winter so far likely across much of Southwest Virginia; Tuesday precipitation looking doubtful
• UPDATE 8:45 AM, 2/11: Blustery winds for all, snowflakes for most, white ground for many, multiple inches for few
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The late April snow is for real.

It's already falling in Beckley and Bluefield, West Virginia. Showers of snow will advance eastward, and downward in elevation, as the night wears on. I think we'll see a few flakes in the Roanoke Valley by Sunday morning, a few more flakes in the New River Valley, a skiff of white on some of the higher ridges around here, and maybe up to 6 inches in those favored upslope snow belts in West Virginia.

Sunday will be a blustery day everywhere. The high-angle April sun will quickly turn snow to rain at lower elevations, but the showers will be dwindling by late morning, anyway. In the higher elevations along the Virginia-West Virginia line, snow showers may hang on into Monday morning, but will have trouble accumulating when the sun is highest.

Winter will again unwind and we'll warm up through the week.

4/22: Summer and winter are months apart on the calendar, but in terms of our spring weather, they can be days apart, hours apart, or even stacked one on top of the other in our atmosphere.

This week is an amazing example. On Wednesday, highs vaulted well into the 80s in our area, with a high of 83 at Roanoke Regional Airport. Newport News hit 90.

By Sunday morning, you could be seeing snowflakes in the air.

Atmospheric dynamics will be running amok this week. It may have started Thursday afternoon, if you heard rumbles of thunder or saw hail bounce on the driveway.

A cold front moved south Thursday through our area, and was expected to be near the Virginia-North Carolina line by this morning. This cold front pushed into the summerlike warmth that's been in our area a couple of days. Meanwhile, temperatures just a few miles up were still below freezing. It was a recipe for strong storms, bearing hail and gusty winds.

That front is expected to change its mind and move back north as a warm front today, bringing the warm, moist, unstable air back into our region this afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, another cold front will be moving toward us from the west. The collision could trigger another round of storms tonight into Saturday.

But it's not just a cold front. Upper-level energy from two different branches of the jet stream will combine forces, or "phase," over the Mississippi River Valley, then swing east. This will create a strong upper-level low-pressure area, which in turn will spin up a strong surface low along the coast.

This is the kind of scenario that we never really got all winter when it could have spelled a big winter storm. As the cold front whizzes by Saturday and this cold pocket of air in the upper low parks over us Saturday night and Sunday, it will still be quite cold and blustery.

With moisture lingering by the storm in some abundance, we will begin to see rain and snow mixed in our highest elevations Saturday evening. The snow will gradually work down in elevation through the evening and into Sunday morning.

With temperatures possibly falling into the mid-30s even here in Roanoke, I wouldn't rule out seeing a few flakes of snow right down to the valley floor. The higher up you are, the better chance you have of seeing snow, and some ridgetop areas, especially above 3,000 feet, might even see enough to whiten things up come Sunday morning.

The blustery chill will continue into Monday, with off-and-on rain/snow showers in the mountains. Then, things go from wild to mild, and we gradually warm up as things get calm and sunny next week - yet another personality of spring.