October Flakes

Even though it won't stick, we might be seeing our first flakes of the season this morning! It's way ahead of schedule, especially considering how warm we've been leading up to this current cold shot, but for snow lovers like me... we'll take it!

Second Big Front Brings FALL

It was about 8 days after our first big weather-changing front, we got a second one:

This one wasn't quite as gusty, but we did get even more much needed rain, and our very first temperature below freezing since April 4th! Freeze Advisories were out Wednesday night in to Thursday morning, and growing season ended as we reached 29.3­­° at my house Thursday morning.

We'll have another front sweep through tonight in to tomorrow which I'm going to go ahead and classify as our third of four season-changing fronts. One more and I think we'll be in full on fall and winter mode. That's when you'll see posts on this site ramp up!

The FROPA

I've probably posted this a bunch, but I always feel like we need 3-4 strong cold fronts to clear the area before we can get in to a winter-like pattern. Well, today was the first one. Finally. It's probably a couple weeks later than expected.

Above is timelapse from my roof cam. Ignore the watermark at the bottom with weather stats, apparently that wasn't working at the time. The most noticeable thing is how the camera began to bounce around after the rain stopped. 

Within 15 minutes the temperature dropped 10 degrees and the winds were howling at 30-40mph. 

With a high in the 50s tomorrow, this will be the first time since the beginning of September it'll actually feel like fall!

Ending the Mini-Drought, Still No "Fall"

On Thursday we ended our 20 day dry spell here in Columbus with a little under half an inch on average across the area. Then yesterday that amount was crushed with about 1.5" across Central Ohio thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Nate and a trough just north of the area that run out all of that tropical moisture.

The lawns needed it, but what little foliage we had didn't. Lots of leaves came down, even without changing colors. It'll be a pretty ugly autumn here in Central Ohio.

So, once again, where IS fall? We're still above normal for at least the next week, with highs in the 70s and 80s. But even if we look 8-14 days out, the CPC still has us well above average for the period:

Past this period I feel like we'll finally fall in to a period of storminess, with troughs plowing down from Canada weekly through the end of the month and in to November. Still, nothing looks like a true cool down in the mid range.

So until then, keep the short sleeves out!

So, Where's Fall?

For anyone who has followed me from my Wunderground Blog days until now, you'll notice there's a definite down tick in posts around summertime. It's not that I don't like the summer, it's just that... it's boring. Most days are warm, little forcing to push instability in to thunderstorms here in Ohio, and it's generally just a dead period for interesting weather.

I have an obvious bias toward winter weather, but I also love storms too. We don't get those in the summer. Instead, those are reserved for spring and fall. Well, we hit meteorological fall about 26 days ago here in Central Ohio, and since then there still hasn't been much to write about. We've seen six days of rain, none with storms, and a backwards temperature trend that has many, even heat lovers, longing for cooler temps and falling leaves.

The first couple days of September struggled just to hit 60°! It felt great and some trees started to respond with quick changes in color. I had many people ask me, "is this it? Did we turn a page on the calendar and just like that... fall?" No, unfortunately, I had to let everyone know this would rebound. And it sure did. It gradually warmed to where it is today, looking at our 6th straight day of 90° heat. Yuck. Before September we had three 90° days all year. Yesterday was also our second warmest day of the year at my house (91.9°).

So here's some good news. Tomorrow is our last hot day for a little bit. A cold front that's been stalled in the middle of the country for some time will finally move east, followed by a reinforcing shot. That should give us some comfortable low 70s and high 60s temps for a few days.

But just a few.

After some up and down next week, we'll settle in to another warm pattern for the second week in October with a massive ridge taking up most of the US:

This means it's going to be a very slow start to the cold weather season. In fact the pattern doesn't lend to any major cool downs in the next 16 days. That's pretty unheard of. While we saw a couple 80° days last October, we never saw long stretches like this. Those were usually in response to the upwelling of warm air ahead of a cold front. This is a block. Period.

I usually like to see 3-4 big storm systems push across the country before we settle in our winter pattern, with the arctic jet finally dropping far enough south to give us our final cool down. We haven't even seen one of these storms. 

Before you panic, this says nothing about the upcoming winter. I have a pretty good confidence early on that we could see cold and snow this winter, unlike the past few.

I'll be posting more frequently now that we're heading in to the cooler months!