Perfect weather days
If you’re a skier, six inches of new powder snow and a morning forecast of sunshine and light wind make for a perfect winter day.
Sunshine along with calm winds and pleasant temperatures make for a great day of birding in the springtime and summertime requires nice, sunny, warm afternoons to go kayaking or swimming at the lake.
For me, I like autumn best with cool, refreshing mornings and sunny, pleasant, cloudless afternoons.
This past week, and for that matter most of October, has provided the local area with some fantastic weather: temperatures in the 60s, no humidity or clouds and calm winds, all the ingredients for a perfect fall day.
It is a rare event to get a week of beautiful, sunny days, pleasant temperatures, low humidity, no rain and very little in the way of clouds. The best news is that the forecast for the coming days looks like more of the same.
The past 30 days have seen only two with any real measurable rain. The remnants of a hurricane moving up the Ohio Valley produced our only substantial rainfall, totaling 2.36 inches. Our average for the entire month of October is just 2.86 inches.
October is our driest month and many times the remnants of a tropical storm or hurricane come close enough to help with our October rainfall. Without these events the fall months would be much drier.
Those of you with home barometers may have noticed that this past week also saw readings close to 30.50 inches of pressure which indicated that our weather was being controlled by a large high pressure, fair weather systems.
High pressure brings with it subsiding air and any upward air motion to produce clouds and storms is usually suppressed as the air descends rather than rises.
The other interesting weather event taking place during October was the two large Nor’easter storms that hovered off the Atlantic coast, causing gigantic waves with coastal erosion, closed roads and destroyed homes. Hugh storms on the Pacific coast caused similar problems for coastal dwellings.
Pacific hurricanes and tropical storms usually do not bother these coastal areas. All of this weather activity is a by-product of the Super EL Nino weather pattern that has developed.
Diane and I decided to travel into the mountains a few days ago to see the colors and have a bite to eat. The ride was beautiful and we ended up at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland.
The colors had already passed and many of the trees were already devoid of their leaves. It’s been an odd year and with all the sunshine and rains of August and September we thought it would be a great year to see the fall foliage.
The ride was great, as was the food and the 4.26 cost for gas but the colors were a bit on the dull side.
Perhaps next year will be better and there is still some color to come in the lower elevations and the forecast is for the dry, nice weather to continue.