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Fading light, heat lead to brilliance

By Jack Hughes for The 2 min read
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How quickly the days grow shorter. Sunrise and sunset on the first day of fall is 7:06 a.m. and 7:16 p.m. By the end of October, sunrise will be 6:48 a.m. and sunset 5:17 p.m. Lesser amounts of sunshine in October also take a toll on our average temperatures, as they decline from a high and low of 70 and 49 degrees on the first day of October to 60 and 40 degrees by month’s end.

Temperatures drop low enough to produce our first frost and freeze in October and some years we see our first snowflakes of the season. Halloween 1984 saw some 4-8 inches of snow blanket Southwestern Pennsylvania. Other years are frost and snow free and we are left to enjoy many pleasant sunny mild days and comfortable cool mornings.

Even if we do get a cold snap in October, we almost always have a period or two of what we call, Indian summer when temperatures become pleasant and skies are sunny and much time can be devoted outside to gathering in the harvest and getting ready for the coming colder days of November. Most years we experience more than one period of Indian summer-type weather and this can actually occur into November and early December. Last year, you may recall how balmy the weather was all the way until the end of December.

The ski resorts had one of their latest openings ever.

October is also the month of the big color show put on by Mother Nature as she shuts down the chlorophyll factory for the winter. The green chlorophyll actually hides the other colors that are present in the leaves all summer and only become visible when the green starts to fade away.

The factory closes each year due to the cooler temperatures and the decreasing amounts of sunshine. Lots of talk about the colors being more muted this year due to the warm winter we had last year and the cold snap in April.

I still think it will be a great show as Mother Nature is not one to let us down.

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