Meteorological fall ends on an average note

ALBANY — After a seemingly warmer than normal fall in recent weeks, it may come as a surprise to learn that much of this fall season was fairly average, and saw patterns similar to last fall.

Meteorological fall ends this week, and the start of meteorological winter is Dec. 1. The start of winter most are familiar with will be on Dec. 21, which coincides with the winter solstice.

“Looking at the temperatures, we are pretty close to the seasonal average, with the exception of basically the last week of October through mid-November, when we were above average,” said Lee Picard, meteorologist at the National Weather Service Albany.

The area saw a three-week warmer period this fall, when temperatures were five-to-10 degrees higher than normal.

“Outside of that window, we’ve been, I would say, remarkably average this fall,” Picard said. “Obviously a few days above average, a few days below but, in general, pretty average temperature wise from the beginning of September to mid-October and then since mid-November.”

Precipitation in the area is slightly above normal amounts for the meteorological fall. The average value of precipitation for September through November is between 10.5 and 11 inches. This year, the area has had between 11.5  and 12 inches in that time, Picard explained.

“We’re slightly above average for precipitation, but fairly close to normal, and that’s of course coming off the heels of a dry summer,” Picard said. “We haven’t really run up big precipitation totals, they’ve just been slightly above average for most of the season.”

Temperatures this meteorological season are running about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit above average for Sep. 1 to Nov. 22, said Paul Pastelok, senior meteorologist and lead US long-range forecaster at AccuWeather.

“From a precipitation standpoint, we’re a little bit wet, but not that much wet,” Pastelok said. “We’re about an inch, maybe an inch-and-a-half, over the normal amount of rainfall you get in the fall season.”

Weather events did occur this fall which stand out from the average, Pastelok explained. Like the 1.5 inches of snow reported in November, and seeing temperatures in the 70s for three consecutive days in November. Fall is a time of year when there are bigger temperature “swings,” he said.

“People see that it’s been pretty up and down the second half of the fall,” Pastelok said. “We’ve had some really mild temperatures but, at the same time, we’ve also had snowy conditions. I think we can expect more of that going into December. We’ll have to watch to see how things change towards the end of the winter season.”

Fall weather is not an accurate indicator for how severe winter weather will be. What is going on in the stratosphere and the polar vortex, and the winds in the stratosphere, can indicate what types of trends can be seen going from fall into winter, Pastelok said.

“What it is telling us this year is that, yes, we’re getting some cold here in the fall, we expected that,” Pastelok said. “We expected some influence from the polar vortex, which was weaker and stretched out, and kind of allowed more colder air to be in the pattern.”

Overall, this fall has been average, said Nathan Bain, senior software engineer for New York State Mesonet.

“In terms of temperatures it’s been a pretty average fall,” Bain said. “Our high temperatures and low temperatures have been within a degree or two of normal for the last few months. This month — November — has been a little warmer than normal, but overall if you take the fall as a whole it’s pretty average.”

Fall has been slightly more “moist than normal,” he explained.

Categories: Email Newsletter, Fulton Montgomery Schoharie, News, News, Saratoga County, Schenectady County