Good Wednesday everyone and welcome to the month of September! Today marks the first day of meteorological fall meaning summer to us weather folks is now in the books. It was a record setting hot summer across the region and some of the numbers will astound you. We will take a look at that… talk about a VERY cool holiday weekend that is just ahead and take a look at Hurricane Earl.

Before we look ahead… let’s take a look back on our record setting summer. Anyway you slice it… the numbers are staggering.

Louisville: Summer 2010 will go down as the HOTTEST summer on record! The average temp for Louisville was 82.3 degrees. This demolished the prior hottest summer average temp of 81.0 set back in the dust bowl era of 1936. That is an AMAZING stat!!!!

Lexington: Summer 2010 will go down as the 5th hottest summer on record. The average temp was 77.6 degrees. The only summers ranking above this one are: 1. 1936   2. 1952   3. 1943  4. 1983

Some other noteworthy records…

Frankfort: 5th hottest Summer on record.

Bowling Green: 3rd hottest Summer on record.

Paducah: 2nd hottest Summer on record.

I had forecast this to be a hotter than normal Summer… but I can admit this blew away that outlook I put out back in May. Now the job is to see what we can learn from it and see if it is telling us anything about the fall and winter ahead.

The current weather features more of the same to kick off the month of September as the heat holds for a few more days. Highs today and Thursday will likely range from the low and mid 90s across much of the area. An increase in humidity and an approaching cold front may be enough to touch off a scattered thunderstorms later in the day Thursday. The main action will be along our front which will sweep eastward across the area Friday. This should provide us with a pretty good shot at some much needed rainfall. The quick movement of the front suggests totals should not be that high.

The BIG news is the amount of cool air moving in behind the front for the weekend. Temps will really take a tumble for Saturday and Sunday as daytime highs likely stay in the 70s. As a matter of fact… Saturday can easily see only low and mid 70s for high temps. This is one impressive trough digging in from Canada and the European Model shows this well…

In all honesty… that is a heck of a cool air shot into much of the eastern part of the country for this time of year. Both the GFS and European models are showing much of the area dipping into the 40s Sunday morning. The nice weather will stick around into Labor Day itself with sunny skies and temps warming toward the low 80s. It doesn’t get much better than this for a holiday weekend!

Hurricane Earl continues to churn toward the mid atlantic coastline as it will likely be a VERY close call in terms of an actual landfall from North Carolina to Maine. Here is the latest on the storm…

goes east infra red hurricane sector image

3 DAY TRACK
[Image of 3-day forecast, and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]

5 DAY TRACK
[Image of 5-day forecast and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]

Once again… I can find no reason to argue with the track from the NHC. I will say this… the European model did show this storm farther west that the NHC track. Either way… folks along the east coast should be nervous right now as the storm track forecast won’t have to change very much at all for some ares to get a direct hit.

Have a great Wednesday and take care.