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| A blazing hot October afternoon on the Wekiva River in Seminole County. |
Fall Will Have to Wait: Forecasters Predict Long-lasting Heat in Eastern USA
For about a week after the fall equinox, much of the eastern two-thirds of the Lower 48 states enjoyed crisp, refreshing autumn weather. But now Mother Nature has changed course. Warm, humid conditions more typical of late summer have returned and show little sign of retreating.
Forecasts now call for above-average temperatures lasting at least 10 days, with high temperatures in some areas nearly 30° above normal at times. The core of the anomalous warmth is predicted to focus in the north-central United States, but above normal temperatures are anticipated to prevail in most places east of the Rockies.
The weather pattern may trigger heavy rainfall and severe storms in the central United States and could eventually support new tropical storm activity near the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s not clear when this warm pattern will break down, and October is almost certain to end up warmer than normal over a large part of the nation.
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| In an average year the rains disappear around mid-October. In 2021 the rains ended mid-September. |
Florida Seasons
East central Florida experiences seasons that differ from most of the remainder of the country. Rather than the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and fall, east central Florida exhibits a distinct Wet (warm) Season and Dry (cooler) Season. This duality of seasons is similar to the Monsoon or Wet-Dry climates that other regions of the world experience.
The Dry Season
The Dry Season usually begins in mid-October as the first synoptic scale cold front brings drier and slightly cooler air into the area. This first front sometimes results in a significant rain event. In 2021 the Dry Season began with a strong high pressure system that built over Florida in mid-September. The sinking air within the dome of high pressure precluded any rainfall.
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The heat is already baking parts of the Northern Plains, with temperatures forecast to hit 90° on Tuesday in western North Dakota, where average highs this time of year are in the 60°s. Bismarck could spike to 90° and tie a record last set in 1949, while Minot is forecast to shatter its record of 87° by four degrees.
Adjacent parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan may see temperatures climb higher than in the heart of Texas. Winnipeg is forecast to reach 82° this week and could see one of its longest October streaks of highs of above 68 degrees on record.
The heat is predicted to expand as far west as eastern Montana, with record-challenging highs in the mid-80°s predicted around Billings.
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| A very hot and very dry scene on Lake Theresa in Central Florida the first week of October 2021. |
This latest bout of heat follows an even more intense round last week when it hit 100 degrees in Hazen, N.D., the highest temperature ever recorded so far north so late in the calendar year.
The heat is combining with bone-dry conditions to bring “near critical” fire weather concerns across the northern part of the central United States, with relative humidity values falling as low as 10%.
In the coming days, periodic fall cold fronts may attempt to transport cooler air to the Northern Plains and Midwest, but the fronts will largely fizzle before they reach the Eastern Seaboard and are unlikely to displace milder-than-average temperatures in most areas.
Expansive and enduring warmth |
| Some things follow the traditional seasons: Here lubber grasshoppers (Romalea microptera) spend their last weeks procreating and depositing their eggs. Armies of their young will emerge in late February. |
The pattern of enduring warmth is the product of a bulge in the jet stream over the middle and eastern parts of the Lower 48. To the west, a dipping jet stream is set to bring cool conditions and even mountain snow in the Rockies. This pattern appears to be locked in for at least the next 10 days or so.
Temperatures in the central and eastern United States will remain in the 70°s and 80°s, delaying the traditional gradual temperature decline that typically occurs during October. The European modeling system shows temperatures at least 5° to 15° above average east of the Rockies.
Chicago could see highs approaching 80° this weekend, with sunny conditions and a slight uptick in humidity.
Columbus Day in Washington, DC could feature highs in the upper 70°s, and none of the predicted highs over the next 10 days are below the normal of 72°.
The actual departures from average aren’t terribly remarkable, but the longevity of the warmth as well as the lingering summertime moisture is noteworthy.
The warm air is delaying fall foliage, which is rather faint even as far north as the Maine-Canadian border region.
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Other species follow predictable patterns driven by the sun. Above and below, Flaming Torch Bromeliad (or Foolproof Plant; Billbergia pyramidalis) are unaffected by the extreme heat and dry of early fall 2021. These plants bloom for a few days just after the autumnal equinox. They will bloom again around the spring equinox.
The rain and severe storm threat
Where the warm and cold air masses clash, severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall will result. Already, meteorologists at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center are monitoring a risk of dangerous thunderstorms across the south-central Plains and Ozark Plateau from Sunday into Tuesday of next week. Cold air arriving from the west will lift warm, moist and unstable air to the east, brewing thunderstorms with the potential for large hail and damaging winds.
An insurgence of jet stream energy aloft, meanwhile, will induce wind shear, or a change of wind speed and/or direction with height. That could manifest in a tornado risk as well.
In the southeastern United States, a “cutoff low,” or zone of low pressure and cool air aloft, will linger for days, holding back temperatures but tapping into moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and leading to heavy rainfall. Since it’s pinched off from the jet stream, it has nothing to move it along.
Flash flood watches blanket most of northwestern Florida, Alabama and northwestern Georgia, and flash flood warnings were issued Tuesday morning southeast of Atlanta, where up to three inches of rain had already fallen.
Weather models indicate another three inches or more may fall by Friday afternoon.
The weather pattern is also one to watch for potential storminess in the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the middle and latter part of the month.
The upcoming pattern will feature several decaying cold fronts that will shift east with time, and pockets of spin on the tail end of them may eventually wind up in the gulf. Those eddies occasionally prove conducive to tropical development there and in the Caribbean, where water temperatures are unusually warm.
There’s no specific gulf threat at this time, but given the pattern in place, forecasters will closely monitor the situation.
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| As hot as it is Halloween decorating has to happen soon. Here I move a truckload of Halloween from one house to another. |
The record-challenging heat in unusual locations and duration of warm conditions over such a broad area are weather features consistent with a warming world.
Every season except summer is getting shorter, a sign of trouble for people and the environment
Climate research has shown an expanding summer season and a trend toward shorter autumns, a pattern that this year exemplifies.
Dexter Returns
New Blood
During the last eight years since Dexter Morgan faked his own death and went off the grid in Showtime’s serial killer drama, he has lived a “nomadic” existence according to star and executive producer Michael C. Hall. But when the continuation limited series, “Dexter: New Blood,” picks back up with him, he has settled down in the fictional small town of Iron Lake, N.Y. Only, he has settled down alone, having left his young son Harrison with his serial killer ex Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski).
Dexter is living in Iron Lake under the assumed name of James “Jim” Lindsay and dating the police chief, Angela (played by Julia Jones). He has also been able to keep his Dark Passenger at bay, trying to befriend a deer, which Hall said “represents some aspiration to goodness to purity — one that he wants to cultivate and wants to come closer and closer to,” as well him exercising and cultivating restraint.
“It’s methadone to the heroin of killing,” Hall explained. “His whole life when we meet him is one that is facilitated by is abstinence. The internal relationship and good graces that he enjoys with Deb, or has enjoyed, have everything to do with is abstinence. He’s in the state of protracted penance.”
But of course it won’t be long until his past catches up with him.
As showrunner Clyde Phillips revealed during the show’s Television Critics Assn. press tour panel on Aug. 24, since “you can’t do a show about Dexter’ without including the theme of fathers and sons,” they had to bring back his son, who is now a teenager and played by Jack Alcott.
“His son has always thought he was dead and then found out he was alive and has a great resentment,” Phillips explained. Dexter, therefore, “has a lot of work to do to win his son back and prove that he’s a good father.”
Additionally, his sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) plays heavily in the new season, despite her dying in the original series finale. Instead of Dexter talking to his adoptive father Harry (James Remar) in his mind, it is Deb he internally manifests and who, in turn, acts as a moral compass and stand-in for some of the audience.
“Deb’s character says later in a later episode, basically what Harry did could be considered child abuse,” Phillips said. “To take your son who you’ve rescued from being born in blood and who’s out killing dogs in the neighborhood and then channeling him to use his force for good and go out and kill bad people is not the healthiest psychiatric situation to be in. And I think Deb…represents a corner of Dexter’s mind that we all have in our own heads that says, ‘Well, wait a minute. If you do this, then here are the consequences and then you decide whether or not to do it whether or not to pursue it.'”
Life for Dexter-now-Jim changed a lot in the eight years the audience spent away from him, and that includes the way people respond to crimes. Phillips noted that the show will acknowledge that, in part with a true crime podcaster character played by Jamie Chung.
“We also broke the format of what we were doing before,” added executive producer Scott Reynolds. Then, he recalled, it was a “Big Bad and smaller bads … We find, stalk and hunt and wrap them in plastic and kill them — like eight to 10 bad guys each season.” Now, “we stepped away from that a little bit and made it much more personal. It’s about Harrison. It’s about family life. It’s about a father who is a murderer — a serial killer — and the effect that that has on everybody around him.”
The team behind “Dexter: New Blood” acknowledged that in many ways this new season, which takes place over the course of approximately two weeks in Dexter’s life, came out of the feelings that the show did not end well the first time around, but they did not want to confirm whether the 10th episode of this season would come with a definitive ending and therefore be only a special one-off season.
“I certainly do hope that watching the show is a satisfying experience for people who watched it originally and are curious about what happened to him,” Hall offered. “I certainly hope it does provide some definitive answers that aren’t primarily mystifying to people.”
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