WeatherWatcher: Dry weather on the way, September review

N 185th St looking west towards Ashworth Ave N.
Photo by Lee Lageschulte

Forecast: One more day of rain showers, then we get a break as high pressure moves in from Tuesday afternoon through the weekend. We are expecting morning clouds and fog in places before we clear out to sunny skies Wednesday through early next week.

Temperatures will range in the lower to mid 40's for lows and 60-65°F for high temperatures Tuesday through Sunday. Longer range forecasts indicate the sunny weather should last us through the middle of next week.

September review: September overall was very normal, very close to average in temperature and rainfall. This is the first time we've had an entire month run at or below normal in temperature since February.

Rainfall for the month was slightly below normal, but I think well within normal variability for this time of year.

Wind gusts, now reported at the new Richmond Beach Station, probably typical but this is the first month of data for our area on wind. We had a couple days with winds gusting to almost 30mph, one gust to 28.8mph on September 16th, another gust up to 27.6mph on September 22nd during the convergence zone storm. September 22nd was also our wettest day at a total rainfall of 0.86 inches.

Readers have already started asking me if it's going to snow this winter. There's talk of a possible weak El Niño developing in the tropical Pacific this winter. It's not a full blown El Niño, it's something called an El Niño Modoki, where only the Niño 3.4 region (central tropical Pacific) develops warmer than normal sea surface temperature conditions.

Right now I do not expect this to change our fall or early winter weather much from normal. This ocean pattern typically only affects weather patterns later in the winter, typically January through March. After the New Year the El Niño might bring us some warmer than normal temperatures, but not always.

Typically during previous winters of this set up, wind storms have been likely, especially in December and January. Lowland snow events have been basically equal chance compared to neutral winters. We could see some lowland snow, especially before January, but we could also have a no-snow winter.

If you want to compare the possible winter outlook to a previous winter, the 2006-2007 winter season was similar set up as what is being forecasted this winter. I'll be able to provide a better picture of a winter outlook after Halloween.

For current weather conditions visit www.ShorelineWeather.com