WINNING THE JACKPOT...

Make no mistake about it, temperatures in the mid to upper 70s this time of year means you've selected 5 winning lottery numbers. Picking the remaining red Powerball is all you need to do to walk away with the jackpot. Adding full sunshine, low humidity, and light winds in with the temperatures, it's fair to say the Midwest hit mother natures version of the Powerball jackpot. The great thing about this game is that there's no losers. Nobody gets rich, but we all walked away winners with a spectacular fall day. Congratulations to one and all!

As far as the numbers go, these are the average October high temperatures to date from around the region. The 22 day mean high in the Quad Cities is currently running at 76 degrees.

Breaking that down even further, the average daily high temperature this month is cruising along at a whopping 10 degrees above normal. Let me stress again, that's 10 above normal per day for 22 consecutive days.

The next 5 days, which gets us through October 28 shows daily departures of 10.5 to 12.5 degrees above the mean.

This is not offical, what I'm seeing in the records indicates the average temperature (high and low) is 60.6 degrees in Moline. Currently, that makes this October the 4th warmest on record behind (1963, 64.4), (1947, 62.6), (1900 61.8).

As we've established, with another 5, maybe 6 more days of unseasonal warmth ahead, chances are extremely good that October 2026 ends up in the top 5 of all warm Octobers going back to the 1870s. Thank you very much. Here's what the GFS shows for temperature trends the next 2 weeks at the Quad City International Airport in Moline.

You probably noticed that readings do begin to cool around the 30th, something we've been alluding to on the site all week long. While 50s are quite a change, I'm still a bit mystified that despite a recurving thypoon in the western Pacific, the EPO (eastern Pacifc Oscillation) absolutely tanking, and the AO (Arctic Oscillation) trending neutral or slightly negative, that models are not showing a colder push than what's indicated.

That could easily still happen, but so far deterministic models are shying away from a more potent shot of cold air. The one model that hints at a colder solution is the GFS AI (based on artificail intelligence). It's 7 day temperature departures are quite significant Octber 31 through November 6th. That would certainly support some highs in the 40s. However, without stronger backing from other guidance the strength of the cool down at the end of the month remains an open question.

The EURO is certainly in the camp of a warmer solution for the same period. Quite a contradiction.

In summation, we've got another 5 days of bonus weather which includes high in the 70s and no rainfall through Tuesday, potentially Wednesday of next week. Don't look now, but it appears like the old Powerball should fall into jackpot territory once again Friday. Then, we all become back to back winners and I like the sound of that. Roll weather...TS