www.roanoke.com

We're not going to catch up on a 6-inch annual deficit this week, the rain won't end the years-long drought, nor will it refill Mountain Lake before the dry lake bed can possibly reveal even more mysteries of history and geology. But the kind of rain that appears likely with the coastal low Thursday and Friday is exactly what we need to get on a weekly basis for a few months to properly soak the dry ground. Projections continue to show 1 to 1.5 inches of rain likely across the area as the slow-moving surface low drifts northward and pulls in a strong easterly fetch off the Atlantic into our region. It appears that the rain will be over for the weekend, except for maybe a few showers on Saturday morning.

We have another dry, mild day on Wednesday before clouds and moisture start streaming in Thursday, with rain starting in the afternoon and evening hours. This is not likely to be a heavy rain, just an intermittent gradual rain over a couple of days. For all you snow fans out there ... you better hope that this is a sign of things to come with coastal storms continuing throughout the winter season.

An interesting situation involving the interaction of a coastal low pressure system and tropical system could yield rain for our area about Friday or so of this week. In fact, Monday evening's 5-day rainfall map from the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center projects 1-2 inches of rain widespread across Southwest Virginia ... a dramatic increase from earlier forecasts. The tropical system is currently near Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, not yet a depression. It is expected to be drawn northward as the low takes shape along the frontal boundary near the Southeast U.S. coast. Right now, it looks like the coastal low may be more of a player for us than the tropical system, drawing in abundant Atlantic moisture up the eastern slope of the Appalachians. Figuring out how the two systems interact is tricky and could skew the forecast.

A system similar to this has been forecast on many computer models for more than a week, so if this comes to fruition at all, it would be a tremendous success for the much-maligned long-range models.

Monday will be the hottest day this week, with temperatures possibly topping 80, before a cold front pushes the mercury back a few degrees for the rest of the week (highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s). There is only the barest chance of rain by the weekend.

By the way ... Roanoke's low narrowly missed the 40s on Sunday, only dropping to 51, but most other locations in our area did dip into the 40s.

Here's something to watch in the otherwise docile week ahead: A disturbed area in the Caribbean that will probably become a tropical depression and possibly intensify into Tropical Storm Kyle.

Cool, dry air that has settled into our region will likely send lows into the 40s across the area tonight. If that occurs at Roanoke Regional Airport, it would be the first morning low in the 40s since May 29. Normally, our first 40s don't occur until the first week of October, though 40s this time of year are not extremely unusual. The temperature has dipped into the 40s in the last week of September each of the last three years; 2004 was the last year with lows in the 40s this early in the season. Record lows this time of year for Roanoke are generally in the upper 30s and low 40s, so don' t expect those to be challenged. But you might need to put a sweater on for church or other Sunday morning activities.

The rest of this week looks seasonable with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s. There is little or no chance of needed rain this week until possibly very late in the week, but that's still iffy.

Just a few thousand feet off the ground this morning, a layer of moisture has streamed in on easterly winds off the Atlantic Ocean. But this layer of moisture is not particularly thick, and there is really no mechanism to condense it into rain. So as a result, we have a cloudy, dank kind of day (maybe a few breaks of sun this afternoon), but little chance of any needed rain, beyond perhaps a few sprinkles or light drizzle on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge. This cloudiness may linger overnight into Saturday, before slowly drying out.

No appreciable rain is expected until late next week at the earliest.

Now that we're in for what looks to be a prolonged period of temperatures near normal (slowly warming above normal, but probably not for a week) and, unfortunately, VERY dry weather, with no new tropical systems in sight, this would be a good time to take a breather and ask you a question.

Do you have a weather question you would like to have answered in a future Weather Journal column?

I'll steal a cue from Tom Angleberger, our What's On Your Mind guy, and open the floor to weather questions. Either leave a comment below or e-mail me. Please let me know your name and where you're from.

It may be a few weeks before I get the column out with the answers to some or all of your questions (depending on how many I get), but, unless I'm buried beyond belief, I'll try my best to get everyone an answer.

The National Hurricane Center is presently tracking no systems of interest in the entire Atlantic basin. It marks the first time the Atlantic has been this quiet since July. For the record, the entire series of storms between "D" and "I" made U.S. landfall ... Hurricane Dolly (Padre Island, Texas), Tropical Storm Edouard (Texas-Louisiana border region), Tropical Storm Fay (4 time: Florida Keys, southwest Florida peninsual, northeast Florida peninsula, Florida panhandle), Hurricane Gustav (Louisiana), Tropical Storm Hanna (Carolinas) and Hurricane Ike (Galveston, Texas). That's a run of 6 consecutive U.S. landfalls of named storms that even the hyper-active 2004 and 2005 seasons can't match. 2004 came close with 5 in a row ... Hurricane Frances (Florida), Hurricane Gaston (South Carolina), Tropical Storm Hermine (Massachusetts), Hurricane Ivan (Florida) and Hurricane Jeanne (Florida).

So far, no storm has reached Category 5 at any time, and nothing stronger than Category 3 has come ashore in the U.S. So, while it's been similarly busy to 2004 and 2005, and now with a direct hit on a major metropolitan area from Ike, the overall intensity of storms hasn't been quite as severe as those years. Recall that even last season saw two Category 5 landfalling hurricanes in Mexico.

The good news is that there are no other tropical storms in the pipeline for the U.S. coast to worry about. The bad news to all this is that we, in Southwest Virginia, will have to look elsewhere for drought relief. The southern branch of the jet stream out of the Pacific has shown no signs of yielding the kind of wet storm systems that can help us. It's still a little early for that to kick in, though, if it does.

It's got to be frustrating for the areas remaining in drought over Southwest Virginia that today's rain is mostly staying southeast of us, over areas that have officially been relieved of drought due to the double dose of rains from tropical storms Fay and Hanna. Some areas near Martinsville and Lynchburg on the eastern edge of the drought zone are seeing a decent rain, but only a few showers are making it as far west as Interstate 81 and not much at all is falling west of there. An upper-level low approaching from the west is lifting some moisture up and over a cool dome of air north of a stalled front, a possible rain scenario we've been watching for days. The rain is actually more robust and closer to Southwest Virginia than it appeared it would be as of 24 hours ago. But it's still missing the areas with the worst drought. Areas west of I-81 generaly got lesser amounts with Fay in late August (1-3 inches instead of 4-6 inches, as fell in Roanoke and points south and east) and largely missed Hanna entirely (about an inch in Roanoke, more south and east).

Click here for the latest National Weather Service-Blacksburg radar

We are near the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. Historically, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes begins to tail off by the last week of September, though there are many notable October storms on record and some November ones too. With the tropics very quiet at the moment, no sign of any new impending named storms, it looks like Hurricane Ike has a strong chance to become the iconic storm of the 2008 season for the United States.

The hurricane season has not been a one-act tragedy. Don't believe anyone who calls Hurricane Gustav a near-miss for the Gulf Coast ... it grazed New Orleans, but wreaked havoc in other parts of Louisiana. Hurricane Dolly caused plenty of damage on South Padre Island, Texas. And Tropical Storm Fay didn't even need to become a hurricane turn into a prolific producer of flooding in Florida. But Ike, leaving behind some scenes of near-total wreckage on Texas' Bolivar Peninsula, widespread damage throughout the Houston-Galveston metropolitan area, and deaths from wind-blown debris as far inland as Indiana, will likely reign as the storm most remembered from the 2008 hurricane season. Damage will be counted in the billions of dollars from Ike, but the death toll, at 39 at the time of this entry, appears likely to stay below 100 -- a testament to good forecasting and early warning.

There is still plenty of time to add more chapters to the saga of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, and it's not time for coastal residents to entirely let down their guard, but it will be hard to top Ike the rest of this season.

Click here for the latest updates on Hurricane Ike from the Associated Press

I've decided to make Weather Journal an entirely politics-free zone. In other words, I'm not accepting any comments that endorse or criticize political parties or candidates in any way. I've taken down my own previous entry in which I wrote about how the rise in gas prices will eventually pass as power and transportation are restored. It wasn't really a political entry on my part, but it led to multiple comments about various policies and politicians.

This is a very heated election season, and I fully recognize how important politics is. But Weather Journal is about weather, and only about weather. There are plenty of places to give political opinions, including the Roanoke Times' Round Table blog. We'll keep this blog free of politics and stick to weather.

One final note: It is possible that the advertising bar at the top of the blog page may show a paid political ad from time to time, but that is entirely out of my control. Weather Journal itself does not endorse any political party, candidate or viewpoint.