by Northern News Now meteorologist Dave Anderson
Summer is over and it was a long, wet and hot one – or was it? The answer, as usual, is a little yes and a little no. The no zone was East-Central Minnesota where the temperature averaged a third of a degree cooler than normal all summer long despite a few hot and humid stretches. Rain there averaged about 1.3” below normal each month. That is still considered abnormally dry. I guess that is an improvement over last year’s severe drought, though.
North East Minnesota was warmer and wetter. The temp averaged 1.1 degree warmer than normal. Rainfall averaged only a third of an inch per month below normal. That was enough to get completely out of drought/dry status.
Rain may pick up for both zones in September. The long range forecasting gurus think we’ll get an extra half inch this month. Temperatures will cool down, too, and run two degrees below average. June and July weren’t too far off from average themselves. It just felt a lot hotter due to high dew points pumped into our region by a shift in position of the Bermuda High. It was in the right position to feed us plenty of moisture. If it had backed any closer to Florida or Georgia, though, it would have caused a big drought.
The weather trends for September should resemble the following hypotheses. The 1st to 7th should be rainy and cool. The 8th to 19th could stay cool but with some late season rumbles of thunder. The 20th to 27th have a very vague chance of rain and snow mixes and things turn even cooler. The rest of the month will then dry up and warm up, too.
In general, however, most of autumn should run toward the cool side.
