Today-Tuesday (9/21 to 9/23)
A fairly potent cold front has crossed central Ohio today and has knocked our temperatures down a few degrees and made for a windy afternoon and evening. Winds have frequently gusted over 30mph this afternoon with a few isolated gusts as high as 45mph possible as we go through the rest of the evening. Temperatures will continue to fall and bottom out in the mid 40's tonight and only recover to the low 60's to upper 50's tomorrow afternoon. Lows Monday night into Tuesday morning are likely to be the coldest of the season bottoming out in the low 40's in Columbus to the mid-upper 30's in the usual cold spots and outlying communities. A frost is not likely with this cold shot which is good news for farmers and will make for later frost than past years.Wednesday-Saturday
This week will be a text book example of September in Ohio. Temperatures in the upper 70's to lower 80's and blue skies each day. This mild and dry spell should slow the growth of our lawns and quickly dry out crops in time to harvest. There are also no major weather disturbances in the near term forecast. Beyond the 7 day outlook the models become quite unclear as to what will happen. Some forecasts include the development of a tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico, this would potentially have a large impact on our weather as tropical systems have been known to bring heavy rains and high winds to our area. That is something we will have to watch for, but is quite unlikely at this time.
Fall
You may have noticed a few leaves starting to show some color over the past week. This trend will obviously continue and peak in mid October here in central Ohio and + or - a week depending on where you are in the state. At this time we are forecast to have a good year for fall color, however, it is hard to determine the quality of the fall color since it is so dependent on how much wind an rain we get before peak times.
Miscellaneous
It is hard to ignore all the winter forecasts that start popping up this time of year, but it is important to take each one with a grain of salt. Recently, NOAA has released a forecast that boasts the probability for warmer than normal temperatures across much of the northern United States and drier than normal conditions in the Ohio Valley. This is a very common forecast from them as they tend to be biased toward above normal winters. Their long range winter predictions have had extremely poor results over the past several years so I wouldn't look into that one to much. The farmers almanac has issued a forecast that, in my opinion, is comical. They don't really issue any predictions, but instead use bold adjectives to describe what they think will happen. The biggest problem with this approach is the lack of consistency in the way it can be interpreted. For example, they say we will have "stinging cold" temperatures. This could be interpreted in many different ways because what I consider to be "stinging" is likely to be different from another persons opinion. My advise would be to just wait until late November to get a more accurate winter forecast that can be taken more seriously.
As a side note, I would like to inform you of the records being set in Antarctica. As of this week they have shattered the all time record high extent of sea ice and even going off the charts on many graphs. This has been largely ignored in our biased, politically driven media so I wanted to let you see what was really happening to our "melting planet". I have said it before and I will say it again, CHECK THE FACTS THAT ARE IN FRONT OF YOU BEFORE YOU DECIDE YOUR STANCE ON AN ISSUE. It is frustrating when I see media outlets purposely leaving out stories that would go against the agenda of the station. With Antarctica setting impressive records and the north pole gaining more ice each year, it is time to wake up and move past this notion that the poles are melting and everything is going to flood. It is simply false and a waste of time and resources to talk about.
Here is a graph of the current Antarctic sea ice extent (yellow line) overlaid on previous years.
