Good Monday, folks. Temperatures continue to run on the very, very, very, very warm side for this time of year. If you’re a fan of this, soak it up over the next couple of days, a big time cold front is on the way. This may give us the best rainfall we’ve had since August to go along with some real deal October chill.

Highs today and tomorrow will continue to run between 80 and 85 degrees on a gusty southwesterly wind. I have an interesting parallel to this setup in a bit.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms increase from the northwest on Wednesday as winds continue to crank. Rain chances go up Wednesday night through early Friday, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some 1″ amounts. Winds will be very gusty as the temps tank…

canadian-2

This is a typical October blast of chill with temps mainly in the 50s for Friday and Saturday with the potential for some frost if skies clear by Saturday morning. I’m not sure that’s the case, because another disturbance will try to dive in here from the northwest. That may even touch off a Saturday shower.

Temps will moderate a few days later, but additional action will likely follow next week.

I mentioned an interesting parallel to the current setup across the country. Back in the middle of October 1962, the Pacific northwest was hit by a powerful storm similar to the one from the past few days. Here’re the upper levels from then…

analogs

Here’s the current pattern (with a different scale)…

gfs-5

The similar pattern back in October 1962 gave us several days with highs in the low to middle 80s… similar to what we have now.

Correlation or not aside, the winter of 1962/63 was among the coldest on record in Kentucky. Other notable storms hit the Pacific northwest in 1995 and 1981. Each of the following winters were also colder than normal around here. I was especially interested in seeing 1995 because that’s a year I’ve been looking at already.

Have a great day and take care.