As I wrote earlier this week, certain criteria have to be met for an autumn warm spell to qualify as Indian summer.
First, there has to be an overnight freeze.
Check – Wichita had two straight nights of below-freezing temperatures earlier this week, including a hard freeze dipping into the mid-20s.
Second, the temperature has to top 70, for one or more days.
Check – the mercury is expected to top 70 every day through Monday.
Third, some definitions insist the temp much touch or top 70 for a full week before it’s really an Indian summer.
Hold the pencil on that one; while there should be a handful of 70s by the time a cool front arrives early next week, it may not be a full 7 days of 70s.
Not that it matters much – savor those 70s while you can. We’ll be missing them soon enough.
Good news for ghouls, goblins and other garish costume wearers: Halloween night should be frightfully nice for trick-or-treaters. A sunny day in the 70s will make way for a clear, mild evening, the National Weather Service says.
Readings in the 50s will provide just a touch of crispness but not be too chilly for trolling tykes.
…until after the first freeze of the season. Even then, temperatures have to top 70 – some sources say for a week or more – before a warm spell in autumn can be called Indian summer.
Other sources I’ve checked say it qualifies even if the 70s only last for a few days. Since the first freeze in the Wichita area doesn’t typically arrive until late October, it’s fair to say local folks often don’t experience an Indian summer until around Halloween or early November.
If we’re fortunate, an Indian summer settles in right around late October, so Trick-or-Treating tykes don’t have to be so bundled up against the cold it spoils their costumes.
Come to think of it, I can remember a few Halloweens as a child that you had to step inside and unbutton your coat to show off your costume. Not that we minded so much…after all, we were still getting candy.
….I came across a couple of interesting tidbits about them the other day.
Ninety percent of all avalanches occur within 24 hours of snowfall. Avalanches can reach a mass of a million tons and travel at speeds of 200 miles an hour. No wonder they say you can’t outrun them.
Frost glazed the grass in the pre-dawn darkness, leaving blades sparkling in the shine of a parking lot security light. Even the windows and frame of my car flickered with sprinkles of light….and I couldn’t help but smile and think of the sparkles children – and even some young-at-heart adults – will decorate their faces and hair with when they want to add some zing to their appearance.
Maybe frost is nature’s way of adding some zing to our steps, as we brace against the morning chill.
…….I’ve never been a big fan of yours.
Oh, I love a nice snowfall — as long as I’m not out having to drive in it. Ice? I’ve skidded on ice more times than I’d like to remember, which is why I’m so careful any time wintry precipitation is in the forecast.
According to the National Weather Service, about 70% of all injuries due to ice and snow are the result of accidents that have happened on ice and snow. Another 25% are from people being caught out in the storm.
Most of the injuries are to men over the age of 40, NWS says. Bravado? An overestimation of what they can still do? It’d be interesting to hear some perspective from readers on that.
“Blizzard” is a pretty dramatic word, one that conjures images that may vary from person to person. But the National Weather Service has criteria that have to be met before a storm is defined as a blizzard: Sustained winds of 35 miles an hour or more, with snow and blowing snow reducing visibility to less than a quarter-mile for more than three hours.
If anything, the mini-peak of tornado activity that arrives each autumn has fizzled so far this year, said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Preliminary data shows only 27 tornadoes reported in the entire country so far in October. That compares to 87 tornadoes last year in October and 76 in 2006. No tornadoes have been reported in the Wichita area.
“Perhaps things will pick up to our east and south come November,” Carbin said via e-mail. “But so far, it’s been quiet and I kind of like it like that.”
2008 is still shaping up to be one of the busiest tornado seasons of the past decade, statistics show. The 1,390 tornadoes confirmed through July already tops the 10-year average and is second only to 2004 in the past five years. There were 1,817 tornadoes confirmed in all of 2004.
This is already the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1998, with more than 110 fatalities. It’s only the third time since 1974 that tornadoes have killed more than 100 people in the United States. There were 132 people killed in 1998 and 122 in 1984, according to NOAA records.
……as winter takes a swipe at the High Plains. Goodland has 2 inches of snow on the ground, National Weather Service meteorologist Kelly James reports.
That may not seem like a lot, but with strong north winds visibility’s down to a half-mile this morning, she said. Travel is a challenge, so schools in Goodland, Colby, St. Francis and the surrounding area are closed today.
Snowfall totals were held down by the fact that temperatures stayed above freezing longer than anticipated, so “we got a lot more rain than we did snow” in the area, James said.
…in northwest Kansas. As the sun clears the horizon on Thursday morning, updated forecasts call for perhaps an inch or two of snow in the northwest corner of the state, bounded on the east by Colby and Atwood and on the south by I-70.
From what I saw and heard last night, temperatures didn’t fall quickly enough for the precipitation to transition over to snow.
It will still be a nasty weather day in that region, however, because north winds will be gusting to 50 miles an hour at times.