More 80s than an episode of Stranger Things

🌀 Tropical Storm Gabrielle formed in the Atlantic yesterday and is tracking northwest. It could become a hurricane this weekend south of Bermuda.

The 614cast

Today’s tl;dr

☀️ Sunny, high in the upper 80s.

Forecast highlights

🔁 Weather on repeat

Hope you like this weather, because what we’ve been having is what we’ll continue to have. You can see barely any variation over the next few days.

Yes, temperatures finally begin dropping a smidge early next week as a potential disturbance enters the region.

Broadly speaking, though, temperatures look to remain above average for quite some time. Here’s the American forecast model “ensemble” prediction (essentially a blend of a bunch of its model output) of temperature anomalies.

The relative warmth isn’t just here… it’s widespread across the country.

🌧️ What about the rain?

I’m still not too excited.

Here’s the European forecast model as of yesterday afternoon, running through Wednesday evening. It’s just one solution out of many, but I think is fairly representative of the overall gist.

There are some indications that a weak front could come off Lake Erie on Friday and spark sprinkles or a shower up north, but very few models depict anything happening.

It’s probably not until Monday–Tuesday that things might happen here. Chances are lower than I’d like, and amounts still look fairly minor amongst most of what I’m seeing. This model puts down as much as a half-inch, which would be great… but let’s just say I’m not placing any bets on that outcome right now.

📊 Today’s almanac

Normal low/high: 56 / 77
Record low/high: 34 (1959) / 95 (1955)
Sunrise/set: 7:16 a.m. / 7:35 p.m.

🍂 Fall foliage preview

Explore Fall has a nifty interactive map that displays current estimated fall foliage levels, as well as forecasts. They admit their forecasts aren’t perfect, but continue tuning their model to make it better.

In any case, here’s the estimated color map for today:

Since it’s only mid-September, few places in the U.S. are showing much color. But some are!

You may have noticed some of our trees are starting to change, but it seems those are mostly the ones that tend to go early, especially when stressed like with dry weather.

Here’s Explore Fall’s estimate for a month from now:

Our peak is typically in the latter half of October. If this forecast is fairly close, then we’d be about on track for the usual peak timing.

We’ll see how the weather goes over the coming weeks. Temperatures and rainfall will be factors.

🌭 For the weather weenies

• Strong winds at Mount St. Helens stirs up ash from 1980 eruption (ABC News)

• Human-caused warming tripled the death toll of European heat waves this summer, new report shows (Inside Climate News)