Corey Davis, the Assistant State Climatologist for North Carolina, you called it last week. Man, you have dialed up some fair weather for North Carolina and South Carolina. And yes, there’s a double entendre there, because here we are, the South Carolina State Fair wrapping up this weekend, the North Carolina State Fair just getting underway. But man, what fabulous fall weather we’re having right now. You just about couldn’t ask for a better forecast for that.
“Yeah, Mike and you know, looking back to the end of September, we had that very active weather pattern, especially with Helene. It was also quite a bit warmer through most of September, so we slipped the calendar over to October, and especially now that we’re in the middle of the month, what a big change we have seen now in a very calm, quiet, drier weather pattern, but also just this past week, seeing some of those nice fall like temperatures, those afternoons where it’s only getting up into the 60s, some of The nights where it’s been dropping down into the 40s, both of those are a few degrees cooler than normal for this time of the year. On average, our highs usually running in the low to mid 70s at this point in October. So you’re right, Mike, I think whether folks are out there during the daytime, that’s not going to be too hot. And if folks are out there at night, almost need a little jacket while you’re watching the fireworks.”
Yeah, you absolutely do. So it’s great for fair weather, but let’s talk about how, and you mentioned this. I mean fair weather, I’m speaking about in the weather sense, not in the NC State or South Carolina State “Fair” sense, that usually means dry. And we really are getting dry right now. Tell us about that.
“So it’s not unusual for us to be a little bit drier in October. Places like here in Raleigh, we only average little over three inches of rain in the entire month of October, and that’s a huge decrease from September, where we average more than five inches. So we’re talking about almost cutting our rainfall in half from one month to the next. But when we look at not just the Carolinas, but the entire eastern half of the country, really, the country east of the Rockies, most areas are looking at very dry conditions to start October, pretty much no rain at all out across the plains, and then less than two inches of rain up in the Midwest through the Northeast. Keep in mind, these are areas that haven’t had that rainfall throughout the summer, like we have here in the Carolinas, so they’re still dealing with some drought in places like Ohio and Indiana and Iowa. I know that’s affected some of the corn crops in those spots, because they haven’t got the rain they’ve expected. And now, as they get into the fall, they’re starting to worry about not only what the harvest will look like for those crops, but also some of the other hazards, like wildfires. I know they’ve got some burning bans out across Iowa right now, certainly as the farmers are starting to get that corn out of the fields, a lot of times they will burn those fields just to clear them out, and there’s a risk of those spreading into larger fires. So still seeing some drought out across that part of the country. Locally here in the Carolinas, just a little bit of abnormal dryness along the coast in South Carolina, where they didn’t have as much rain from Helene back about a month ago. But keep in mind, we are looking at basically zero rainfall for the month of October so far across North and South Carolina, and the forecast Mike for the last two weeks of the month is not really showing a lot of hope for more rain, so we could finish October as one of the driest on record.”