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Officially ... Roanoke did barely make it to freezing at 32 on Friday, so Oct. 31 will go down as our "first freeze" for the 2008-09 cool season.

Saturday will not be so cold -- in fact, it will be downright warm after a chilly start, possibly topping 70. A weak cold front will pass through Saturday night, so our temperatures will back off a little on Sunday and Monday. Still, this week looks to be pretty warm with highs primarily in the 60s.

It looks like another narrow escape from an official freeze at Roanoke Regional Airport, with a low of 33 this morning. If it was 33 at 6 feet up, where the thermometer is, you can bet is was below freezing at ground level on a cold, clear night with no wind, which allows the cold air to sink. This will be one of those autumns where the official first freeze date won't bear actual reality -- the date will end up being sometime in November, most likely, but we've really had at least four mornings where temperatures were likely at freezing or below almost everywhere.

Regardless ... it will be hard to beat the weather for high school football and Halloween trick-or-treating tonight, with clear skies, and temperatures generally in the 50s during the time folks will be outside. A slow warmup is under way, but it will be very slow, gradually increasing into next week.

Though almost everyone around did make it to freezing this morning, effectively ending the region's growing season, the Roanoke Regional Airport appears to have again stalled just above freezing at 34, meaning that Roanoke has, officially at least, still not experienced its first freeze of the season. Lows of 35 were recorded on Oct. 20 and 23; the low was 37 on Oct. 19 and 38 on Wednesday. But I would bet most folks in the Roanoke Valley did see a temperature of 32 or below at least briefly early this morning.

In a weird twist ... some locations in Florida, and we're not just talking the northern edge of the Panhandle, have gone on the record books with an earlier freeze than Roanoke. Ocala, Fla., is one of those.

Winds and clouds overnight helped keep Roanoke's temperature above freezing overnight, settling only into the upper 30s. It's the third escape from a freeze Roanoke has had officially in the past couple of weeks. Tonight, with the winds dying and clear skies expecting, there will be another shot at the season's first official freeze in Roanoke. A freeze warning is again in effect from Roanoke south and east, all the regions that haven't had a widespread freeze yet (areas west and north of Roanoke have had multiple mornings below freezing). Keep in mind that just because the airport's thermometer stays above 32 doesn't mean it's not freezing at your house, so take care of any tender vegetation.

Some of our readers have reported snow in the New River Valley this morning. The ski resort areas of eastern West Virginia got quite a nice little coating of snow ... take a look at photos from Snowshoe and Whitegrass. Meanwhile, a freeze warning is in effect tonight for the Roanoke Valley, Southside Virginia and points eastward ... counties where not every spot has fallen to freezing yet this year. While the Roanoke Regional Airport seems to have a way of floating above freezing when everyone else is 32 or below,  it would be pretty safe to say that the area's growing season, what's left of it, will be completely over after the next two cold mornings.

The season's first snowflakes have fallen this morning in parts of West Virginia and mostly the higher elevations west and north of Roanoke as a band of precipitation moved through in association with an arriving cold front. Upslope snow showers are expected to develop overnight as cold northwest winds blow up the western side of Appalachians, and some regions of West Virginia and perhaps the high elevations of far western Virginia could see the ground turn white by Tuesday morning. A few snow showers will probably drift into the New River Valley, and the Roanoke Valley may even see a few flakes come Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, today should be windy and chilly. Even with sunshine, it will be hard-pressed to get into the low 50s today in Roanoke.

It is going to get cold and windy in the Monday-Wednesday time frame, as the first real shot of Arctic air moves in. There will likely be snow showers in the mountains of West Virginia and far western Virginia, and a few flurries may make it into the New River Valley. I wouldn't even rule out a flake or two in the Roanoke Valley early Tuesday or early Wednesday. But this will be a short-lived shot of cold air. By week's end, a large dome of warm air will begin building eastward, and by the 6-10-day period, the Climate Prediction Center map of 6-10-day temperatures looks mighty red, indicating a likelihood of above-normal temperatures over much of the country.

The "underwhelming" rain event made something of a comeback overnight and this morning, at least in Roanoke and locations north and south along the Blue Ridge, where persistent showers moving northward have brought some rainfall amounts in the 1/2 to 1 inch range, locally up to 1 1/2 inches. It's still not the widespread 1-2 inch rain that was expected, but turned out to be not a bad little rain for some areas. The train of showers is slowly diminishing and shifting east, so rain will gradually come to an end as the afternoon progresses, and we might even see a few peeks of sun (I think I've already seen one).

Earlier this week, parts of northwest Kansas were under blizzard warnings as this same large upper-level low affecting us now threatened to spin a band of heavy, wind-blown snow over them. But the blizzard fizzled into some rain/snow mix that barely accumulated. We didn't have a blizzard fizzle, but obviously, this rain storm is not going to be what it looked to be a day or two ago. Heavier storms to our south and east have cut off much of the moisture flow, and the main upper-level atmospheric dynamics are going north and west. As a result, we're only getting light rain and drizzle, enough to make it nasty but not enough for meaningful drought relief. Overnight, as main area of atmospheric lift moves in, some additional rain will likely develop. But I think we'll be lucky to get to half an inch. It loooks like a chilly week is coming up, especially after a reinforcing shot of Candian air about Monday.

Click here for the latest National Weather Service-Blacksburg radar

National Weather Service radar has been showing a band of moderate to locally heavy rain building northeastward along the Interstate 81 corridor through the New River and Roanoke valleys ... here is the radar near 4:40 p.m. .... Click here for the latest look at radar

Also ... click here to see the National Weather Service-Blacksburg map of projected rainfall totals. This map shows the lessened expectations of rainfall I wrote about a little earlier, with generally 1/2 to 1 inch amounts across the area, except over 1 inch in a zone along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge where upslope effects will be the greatest.