- 10/01/12

Can you believe that October is here?!  It doesn't seem that long ago we were bringing in the month of September, welcoming a new football season and returning to school.  Now, it's all about Halloween costumes and candy.  Unlike the summer just past, highlighted by extraordinary heat and drought, September was pretty non-descript.  The average high temperature for the month was 74.4 degrees, which matches the climatological average (30 years average) perfectly.  The average low temperature last month was 51.7 degrees, which is a couple of degrees cooler than the climatological average.

We had about two and a quarter inches of rain last month, an improvement over the excessively dry conditions over the summer, but still down about 50% from what is typical for the month.  Since May first, we've had about nine inches of rain, which is only about half of what we should see.  So, even though conditions aren't as seriously dry as they were several weeks ago, we're still short of rainfall.  Regarding sunshine last month, we saw about 60% of available sunshine which is slightly more than what we normally see.

West Michigan has been dry the past eight days, but later this week, that's going to change.  In addition to the rain, much cooler air arrives by the weekend; a hard frost is likely Saturday and Sunday morning, possibly even our first freeze of the season.  Stay tuned!