The 614cast
Today’s tl;dr
🌥️ More clouds than sun with a slight chance of a shower, high near 80.
Forecast highlights
📉 Cooler midweek than originally expected
No complaints here… instead of upper 80s the next couple of days as I originally thought, we’ll be near 80 today and the lower 80s tomorrow.
The reason for today being cooler is extensive cloud cover for a chunk of the day. Skies should be mostly cloudy through about mid-afternoon, breaking in time for the evening and probably giving us a nice sunset.
Until those clouds thin out, they could spit out a spotty shower or two. I don’t expect any storms, since there’s just not really any decent energy left.
🌡️ Couple days of seasonable warmth
Despite getting a little bonus break from the heat, it’s not totally erased from the week. Highs reach the middle to maybe upper 80s Friday and Saturday and are accompanied by dew points in the mid-60s. So, those days will feel run-of-the-mill summery.
After that, the pattern changes and we see cooler and dry air take over for a while. There’s a lot of blue on the Climate Prediction Center’s outlook, covering the Midwest, Great Lakes, and beyond!
📊 Today’s almanac
Normal low/high: 64 / 84
Record low/high: 50 (1977) / 101 (1983)
Sunrise/set: 6:48 a.m. / 8:21 p.m.
🍂 Falling into fall soon
Does the promise of cooler weather have you thinking fall? It’ll be here before we know it. The graph below shows when Columbus gets its first high temperature at or below a given threshold in the fall.
The earliest first date below 70 (blue line) was August 3, 1880. A quarter of years have done so by August 23, and half of years by September 6.
It would be highly unusual for us to not have at least one high in the 60s by a month from now; only 15% of years have waited past September 20.
There’s a decent gap between the first high below 70 and the first high below 65, but 50s are easier to come by as we forge into fall.
Here’s the list of dates when half of years have had a high temperature at a given threshold for the first time of the season:
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Less than 70: September 6
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Less than 65: September 18
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Less than 60: October 2
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Less than 55: October 12
🌭 For the weather weenies
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Erin’s rate of intensification was a rarity (The Weather Channel)
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The strange divide in how Americans experience summer temperatures (CNN)