A weekend storm system is bringing some light rain to the region, and this same disturbance will also be the beginning of an autumn cool down. While not quite as cool in North Carolina, I had the chance to travel along the Blue Ridge Parkway to take in the tremendous autumn color as seen above. Our weekend storm system will be followed by a reinforcing disturbance later this week, which will really send in the seasonally cool air Tuesday.  This potent upper-level trough sends

M'm M'm good! I'm not talking about Campbell's soup, (which I ate a lot of as a kid). I'm referring to Friday's weather, which saw temperatures hit the 80s in many spots. Those readings are more typical of what you would find in mid-July, not 3 months later, October 17th. Here's a sampling of some of the readings. For a little perspective, below are Friday's temperature departures, (just how much readings were above normal). Impressive, if I say so myself. It looks like we wi

Here we are on the verge of the weekend and if I had to sum it up, I would say we start warm, end up cool, with some rain in the middle for good measure. The key to our successful moments will be timing. Fortunately, the daytime hours of Friday will be summery and dry before rain arrives overnight and departs by morning. That allows for a break Saturday with another round of mild temperatures before more showers Saturday night. The system exits early Sunday, leaving us dry bu

By now, anybody who frequents this site knows full well the first half of October has been one of the warmest since the inception of records at the Moline Quad City airport back in 1873. This graphic shows the temperature departures over the past 10 days. Going even further back to the 1st, the average high this month is 77.6 degrees. For perspective, normal is 68.7. As you can see below, the entire Midwest has been basking in the exceptional warmth. My climate Guru and stati

Take a look at the 7-day temperature departures for the period October 7th through the 13th. That is flat out a blow torch, right on par with the all-time warmest start to October that dates back to 1963. Here you can see, as of the 14th, Moline with an average temperature of 65 degrees is essentially tied with 1963 for the warmest start to October. Going into the 15th, not a single reporting station in my area has hit the freezing mark, although a couple spots in NE and NW I