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September is a wacky month, and this week will certainly show us that! The days of 80s are numbered and the days of 60s are right around the corner...closer than you'd think actually! It's a funny and expensive transition with air conditioners running during the day, and the heat on at night. So we've got good news and bad news this week.

The good news is that a cold front is moving through on Thursday, and that's helping to ensure that Tropical Storm Maria stays well out to sea. With that being said, we will have some showers and storms associated with this front.

Now, speaking of the forecast...here are some of the changes to come:
Tuesday's forecast:
80 and mostly sunny
Friday's forecast:
60 and mostly sunny

As the week progresses, high pressure makes its way down from Canada and sets up shop over the Great Lakes. This will set us up for some cool days, and even cooler nights. If things pan out how the forecast models look, we could be seeing some very cool overnight lows, and scattered first frosts of the season!

So what causes this?
In the northern hemisphere, high pressure rotates outward and clockwise. In this situation, cold air from Canada is pushed down towards us, allowing for unseasonably cool temperatures. During the day, some spots will struggle to get into the 60s, and at night, we're forecasting low temperatures to drop below 40 for a few spots across the region.

It's a losing battle for us warm weather lovers it seems...we'll be trading in the shorts for snow blowers soon enough!

Well August passed us, and September rolled around. Kids went back to school, and the year resumed as it normally does. Vacations are over, but did summer leave as fast as the busses pulled away for the first day of school?

It seems like summer is shorter and shorter every year, but what happened the past few days? Kids walked out of their houses for the first day of school with it feeling more like November than the beginning of September! It seems like someone shut off the sun and left the shower running! Is this it? Should we pack away all of the lawn furniture and break out the snowblowers? Well, let's take a step back and put September into perspective.

Meteorologists are big with averages. What people perceive as "normal" for this time of the year is merely an average of what has happened since records started being widely kept in the late 19th century. With that being said, I love looking at the almanac...I am an almanac geek! Nothing is cooler to me than being able to look into the past and know that the average high temperature in January is 37 degrees for Bridgeport. Perhaps that makes me a weather geek, but I think it's a requirement to be a meteorologist!

So now that we're talking averages, across the state, we averaged around 63 degrees statewide yesterday for a high temperature. The average high is around 75 for September 7th, with the average low being 56 degrees. With that being said, yesterday was cooler than normal, and today will continue to be cooler than average. So are we done with summer weather?

I'm happy to inform you that warm weather is not over! In fact, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center is predicting a warmer than normal fall this year. Normal temperature fluctuations like this happen every year, and when summer transitions into fall, it's often that we get days with highs in the 50s followed by highs in the 80s.

Has the weather been cooler than average? Yes it has, but it is certainly "normal". Rest assured snow lovers, winter is right around the corner...and for you warm weather lovers, fear not, there are still a few beach days left this season!

It was a recipe for one of the highest storm surges in Connecticut's history. You probably heard me and my colleagues here at News 8 talking about the astronomical high tide caused by a new moon, coinciding with the arrival of Hurricane Irene from the southwest. The water level at high tide is already elevated during full moon and new moon cycles, and the strong winds wrapping around Irene were perfectly positioned to funnel Atlantic Ocean water in between our shoreline and Long Island. The water had nowhere to go but inland.

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(photo courtesy of Center for Land Use Interpretation)

My first job in the TV weather business was at KMID-TV in Midland/Odessa, TX. I lived there during one of the wettest years in West Texas recorded history, in which the airport recorded 22.46" of rain. For some perspective, this amount would be devastatingly low for Connecticut, and would rank as our driest year on record. So, what was a very wet year for West Texas would be unbelievably dry for us.
Now, I'm sure you've heard plenty of news stories about the drought conditions in the southern Plains states, and the triple-digit heat accompanying the drought. Well, in Midland, they're pretty accustomed to 100+ temperatures in the summer (today's average high, for instance, is 95 degrees). But this drought is so extreme that I think it is hard for New Englanders to comprehend!
Think about this: Midland's airport has not had measureable rain since March 5th. That's more than 5 months without even a rain shower. Five months! And so far this year, they've only had 0.16" of rain. Try pouring about a tenth of an inch of water into a glass, just to see what that looks like. Can you imagine what it would be like to have only that amount of water falling from the sky... in an 8-month period? I can't imagine it. Heck, when i lived there, it was green! (The photo, by the way, is an example of a "green" landscape in the Midland/Odessa area. Neat, huh?)

The reason I'm sharing this information with you right now is because the 7-day forecast in the Midland area has the best chance for rain that this region has seen in months. In a place where every drop counts, even a quarter-inch of rain (which is in the forecast through the end of the week) would be a huge help. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking about my friends down there and hoping for some relief from the oppressive drought for them!

Hi everyone, thank you for checking out my first blog entry at News 8! Jeff Clark, a News 8 viewer, posted an interesting question on my Facebook page the other day. He asked, "why do we notice the increase in humidity once it passes the 60% mark?" Which made me think... I need to do a better job of explaining the difference between dewpoint and relative humidity!
This summer, I've been using a dewpoint map pretty frequently. The dewpoint is the temperature of an airmass if you could cool it down to the point of condensation. If there's a lot of moisture in the air, you won't have to lower the temperature very much to reach the dewpoint. That's why windows often get foggy on cooler, rainy days! It's also the reason that, on a hot summer day, your cold drink glass will get covered with little beads of water. The cold drink inside cools the surrounding air to its dewpoint, which then causes the moisture in the air to condense into water droplets on the glass.
When the dewpoint temperature reaches above 60 degrees, we tend to notice the humidity more than if the dewpoint is lower. The 60-degree number is really arbitrary, and based on how YOU (if you are an average New Englander) handle the humidity. Believe it or not, surveys have been done to find out how people respond to different dewpoint levels! These surveys are based on real science, though. As the dewpoint gets higher, your body is less able to use perspiration as a cooling mechanism. When we perspire, we rely on evaporation to cool our skin. If the dewpoint is high, the sweat will evaporate too slowly to provide any cooling benefit.
Now, here's when relative humidity comes in. If the relative humidity is 100%, that means the air temperature and the dewpoint are the same. So, the air already contains all the moisture it can support at that temperature, and your perspiration won't evaporate at all! Also, when the relative humidity is 100% (or near 100%), fog forms. So, relative humidity is still a relevant number, but in the summer heat, it's much more important to know the dewpoint temperature!
If you have a weather-related question you'd like me to answer, send me an email: erica.grow@wtnh.com. I hope you find the science of the atmosphere as interesting as I do!

Well, that was certainly a crazy way to start the month of August, wasn't it?!

We had Severe Thunderstorm Watches and Warnings in many communities across the state for several hours. Our Report It mailbox was - pardon the pun - flooded with pictures of rain, hail, flooded roads and at the end, rainbows.

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News 8 Meteorologist Gil Simmons talks about the Springfield Tornado in this clip from Good Morning Connecticut Thursday.

Story link: Tornadoes barrel through Mass., 4 people dead: WTNH.com