We are in store for nice mid fall day across central New York Thursday. As we thought earlier in the week it will turn into the warmest day of the week. We are starting the day in the mid 50s and we have a lot going for us in terms of reaching 70 degrees. First, the wind is out of the southwest and that will help to transport warm air from the Ohio Valley our way. Second, there will be at least some filtered sun through early afternoon plus a cold front won’t move through until late in the day, after we are past the prime heating so we feel we have a good shot of tacking on another 15 degrees or so to our morning temperature. Amazingly we won’t even be close to a record high today. 84 is the record for the date the warmest for so late in the season here in Syracuse and that was set back in 1979. In fact, today would only be the 8
th warmest October 22
nd on record.
Even if it’s not a record it sure will feel nice but it does beg the question: is it Indian Summer? As I’ve mentioned in blogs before it’s hard to find a quantitative definition. What I keep seeing is “…an extended period of unusually warm weather typically following the first frost of the season.” That leaves it pretty wide open as to how long the warm weather has to last to be considered Indian Summer. 2 days, 3 days, a week? Figuring that Thursday will end up around 70 that it is going to leave us with two days where the high temperatures were at least 5 degrees above normal. Going back through the records I found the longest stretch of uninterrupted fall warmth in 1977 – 18 days!
The biggest change in the forecast in the near term is to bump the temperature up for Saturday; quite a bit into the 60s again. There was still a bit of uncertainty earlier in the week as to have close a developing area of low pressure would track. It looks like it will be far enough west of us to get southerly winds going and that in turn will get our temperatures into the 60s. Unfortunately that warmth will be associated with more moisture than what will be over us Thursday so it does look like a wet start to the weekend with plenty of showers. One thing to watch for: thunderstorms as a cold front approaches late in the day Saturday.
