The 614cast
Today’s tl;dr
🌤️ Mostly sunny, high in the middle to upper 60s.
Forecast highlights
☔ Still tracking weekend rain
A weather system producing rain this weekend is still on. There’s also better agreement among the forecast guidance on the overall timing, which still favors late Saturday into Sunday.
That said, it’s possible there could be a wing of minor shower activity early Saturday before the main thrust arrives later. If that comes to pass, it would not amount to much.
Sunday will also be windy with gusts around 30 mph possible. With cooler temperatures and showers around, it’ll be a relatively raw day.
🧥 Couple of chilly mornings
If you’re reading this first thing in the morning, layer up — it’s a cool start, but sunshine will be back today to boost highs deep into the 60s. It’ll be 25-ish degrees warmer later today than this morning.
Tomorrow morning will be chillier, similar to last Friday morning. Columbus proper will probably fall to near 40, while outlying areas dip into the 30s. Patchy frost is possible in favored locations again.
Lows warm back to near 50 Saturday morning and possibly near 60 Sunday morning. I’m eyeing later next week for the next bout of frost potential, mainly outside the city as it stands right now.
📊 Today’s almanac
Normal low/high: 45 / 66
Record low/high: 31 (1970) / 88 (1897)
Sunrise/set: 7:43 a.m. / 6:50 p.m.
🎃 Pumpkin weather
The Circleville Pumpkin Show started yesterday… but if you’re looking for the center of the pumpkin universe, consider Morton, Illinois. It’s a town in central Illinois near Peoria, a couple hours southwest of Chicago.
It produces up to 95% of the country’s canned pumpkin, according to a story from Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. Much of that goes through the Libby’s canning plant in Morton.
Like any crop, weather is a big factor.
Pumpkins can withstand dry weather — to a point — but wet weather is where problems really can mount. It can stunt pumpkins’ growth, introduce disease and rot through fungus, even make soil too soft to go and harvest as well as normal.
Two notable shortages of canned pumpkin followed a wet fall in 2008 and wet summer in 2015 in central Illinois.
This season was dry throughout Illinois. In the heart of pumpkin country, rainfall was about 6” below average, or between 50% and 75% of what they should have gotten.
This year’s crop in the Morton area is reported to be pretty close to average.
And in case you’re wondering, Ohio ranks sixth in pumpkin production.
🌭 For the weather weenies
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Native Alaskans show storm destruction, bracing for more (The Weather Channel)