It’s my favorite time of the year.  Honeycrisp apples, apple cider, pumpkin doughnuts, applebutter are just a few of my favorite things.  It’s also a great time to visit many of our local communities with fall festivals.  Here are a few going on this weekend:

Appleumpkin Fest –Tecumseh, MI

Oktoberfest — Put-In-Bay, OH

Applebutter Fest– Grand Rapids, OH

With dry and sunny weather all week, be prepared for the fall color to sprout out!  Our peak colors will arrive in the middle of October.

Septermber of 2011 tied for the 5th wettest September on record.  Enough with the rain already, right?  Looks like early October will trend toward a much warmer and drier pattern.

Rainfall totals continue to pile up with many areas around 2″ or more in a 12 hour period since midnight.  Flood warnings posted for several counites in and around I-75.  Here are some radar estimates of rainfall as a 11 AM Monday.

Hancock County and Surrounding Areas:

Lucas/Wood and Surrounding Areas:

This puts the monthly rainfall well over 5″ and will likely put us in line for reaching into one of the top 10 wettest months of September on record. 

• 1887 — 19 (Would-be) named storms — They hadn’t start naming storms yet back then — 12 Hurricanes
• 1933 — 21 (Would-be) named storms — 10 Hurricanes
• 1936 — 16 (Would-be) named storms — 7 Hurricanes
• 1969 — 18 named storms — 12 Hurricanes *Including Camille
• 1995 — 19 named storms — 11 Hurricanes *Including Felix and Opal
• 2000 — 15 named storms — 8 Hurricanes
• 2001 — 15 named storms — 9 Hurricanes
• 2003 — 16 named storms — 7 Hurricanes *Including Isabel
• 2004 — 15 named storms — 9 Hurricanes *Including Charley, Frances and Ivan
• 2005 — 28! named storms — 15! Hurricanes *Including Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma
• 2007 — 15 named storms — 7 Hurricanes *Including Dean and Felix
• 2008 — 16 named storms — 9 Hurricanes *Including Gustav and Ike
• 2010 — 19 named storms — 12 Hurricanes

And now, 2011. Which includes 15 named storms and 3 Hurricanes, including Irene and Katia.

The most active season on the list is 2005 where from JUNE 8th all the way to JANUARY 7th, 28 named storms, 15 Hurricanes, and 4 Category 5 Hurricanes tore through the Atlantic.

Hurricane season typically comes to an end in November.

This is such a great time of year! Breast Cancer Awareness month isn’t until October, but people are already sporting their pink and supporting such a wonderful cause. As folks gear up for the Race this coming Sunday, eyes turn to us for a Race forecast. As of Saturday morning, this is how things look…

Obviously conditions were a bit less cloudy last year when this picture was taken, but sources tell me that morning temperatures were in the 40s! With over 20,000 racers in 2010, I’m sure all the body heat kept things nice and warm This year conditions will be mostly cloudy with just a slight chance of light scattered showers. While I am expecting the Race to stay dry, I doubt runners would mind a rogue shower anyways. Temperatures will be in the low to mid 50s, reaching 60° by 11pm when things will being wrapping up.

No matter what the forecast, this year’s race is going to be amazing! I’ll be at the starting line cheering everyone on with Jerry Anderson and several other WTOL folks. Hope to see you all there!

After a rather inactive stretch in the tropics, new storms have begun to crop up.
Tropical Storm Ophelia is moving through the Atlantic, while Hurricane Hilary tracks near Mexico in the Eastern Pacific.

As of 5pm, Thursday evening, Ophelia has max sustained winds of 65mph, just shy of hurricane status (74+mph winds) and is moving west at 13mph. As you can see from the National Hurricane Center’s projections, Ophelia is expected to move inward, then track east and back out to sea.

Hurricane Hilary currently has sustained winds of 105mph.

Currently a Category 2 hurricane, the storm is moving just along the coast, tracking westward at 10mph. While Hilary is likely to skim the coast with some rain and gusty winds, it’s not expected to make landfall.

At first recall, I think most folks would agree… When you look back on this past summer, one thing resonates. HOT. With today being the last official calendar day of summer, I thought it was appropriate to review the departing season and dissect what really took place. Above average temperatures are just one thing I noticed in my findings…

For the sake of this blog post, I’m taking into account the entire months of June, July, August, and the first half of September. I know that this is NOT the actual calendar equivalent of the summer season, but it illustrates the seasonal patterns better if done this way.

June. 30 days.

1. 18 days with temps above average (60%)
2. 10 days with temps below average (33.3%)
3. 2 days with temps right at average (6.6%)
4. 6 days with temps 90°+

July. 31 days.

1. 28 days with temps above average (90.3%)
2. 2 days with temps below average (6.45%)
3. 1 day with temps right at average (3.23%)
4. 20 days with temps 90°+

August. 31 days.

1. 21 days with temps above average (67.74%)
2. 5 days with temps below average (16.13%)
3. 5 days with temps right at average (16.13%)
4. 1 day with temps 90°+

September. 21 days. (excluding today — data not yet released.)

1. 7 days with temps above average (33.3%)
2. 12 days with temps below average (57.14%)
3. 2 days with temps right at average (9.52%)
4. 3 days with temps 90°+

Right off the bat, you’ll notice temperatures were above average more often than they were AT average, or below. Except for when we reached September. In the month of June, 60% of the days were above average while July brought temperatures above average 90% of the time! August was no exception with 67% above average. Then as September began to unfold, a new pattern started taking shape. Temperatures fell below average for extended periods of time, and days with temperatures below average have thus far outnumbered those with temperatures above average.

Another thing to notice this summer was monthly precip:

• June + .51” (-3.29 below avg.)
• July + 3.34” (+.54 above avg.)
• August + 3.19” (+.04 above avg.)
• September (so far) + 3.84” (already +1.86 above avg.)

While July was easily the hottest month of the summer, June was the driest. Bringing totals down more than 3” below average, a serious lack of rain in the month of June left folks wondering when the seasonal rain would finally arrive. July provided the answer with rain totals slightly above average for the month, and August followed suit with rainfall amounts nearly dead-on.

Once again, a pattern change took place once calendar pages were flipped to September. Already this month, we’ve seen nearly 4 inches of rain — leaving monthly totals nearly 2 inches above average. The patterns suggest something we’ve all known for a long time now: September is very much a transitional month, allowing summer to end as gracefully as possible and ushering in autumn. It will continue to do so as we finish out the month in just one short week, and say hello to October.

I posted less than a week ago about freezing conditions and the expectations for specific locations around our area. To be a bit more visual, i thought i’d also add this national map, provided by The Weather Channel.

According to the map, our region should expect to start seeing frost on the ground by October 15th. The one thing not reflected on here that i think should still be noted is the influence of the warmer lake waters. By October 15th, the lake waters will have lost a lot of their warmth, but an isulation of sorts will still take place, keeping areas of Port Clinton, Huron, and even up north near Monroe, warmer longer.

A brisk Canadian high pressure system ushered some very cool temperatures into our region this week.

With an average high of 76° for this time of year, yesterday’s high of 60° was downright cold — sixteen degrees below average! Not only that, but overnight cooling went to an extreme as well. Almost breaking the record low of 35° set back in 1966, Thursday night’s low temperature dipped into the upper 30s for the first time since May 5th of this year. That’s a fourteen degree deviation from the average low temperature for this time of year.

Now as we move through the day today, we look as temperatures slowly moving back towards average. With a low of 44° and a forecasted high of 68°, temperatures still have a clear depature from normal — 9 and 8 degrees respectively — but we are moving in the right direction, none the less.