This is turning out to be a very dry month. So far Portland has received less than half an inch of rain and over half of that fell back on the 6th of the month, two weeks ago. For some parts of New England, if there isn’t much more rain this month, this will be one of the driest Septembers in over 5 decades.

High pressure weather systems often bring dry weather and because we have seen so many high pressure systems this month, we don’t see much rain. When we have seen the chance of rain often the moisture is drying up as it heads to the coastline. There are other areas that have seen even less rain than Portland.

Each week there is a drought monitor bulletin released to the public. (above) This product doesn’t do a great job at short-term rain issues as it looks at the larger picture. In Portland, rainfall this year is 20% above normal, much of that due to the heavy rain event of August 13th. If you remove that extreme event our rainfall is not much above or below normal.

The ground can only store so much rain, so while August was wet, that moisture was gone from the top soil a few weeks later. I don’t want to over beat the drought mantra, but it’s important you are watering any newly planted material this year. It’s very important plants are able to go dormant in a healthy state to make it through the winter.

The flip-side of the dry weather is of course what most of you are talking about, the beautiful sunshine. If you are a golfer, you can’t get much better conditions. This is also great weather for construction projects both personal and municipal trying to get finished by fall. With the exception of Sunday night, there is no rain in the forecast for at least the next 7 days.

Temperatures are coolest today when many of us will experience readings in the 50s most of the afternoon. We had a dramatic drop in temperatures since yesterday’s balmy 70s early in the afternoon. Portland and many communities were well into the 30s this morning.

However, a southerly flow of air will quickly change this and by tomorrow it’s back into the 60s and it gets even better. On Sunday with abundant sunshine and a warm breeze highs will reach the 70s. 70 degree day in the later third of September are a welcome treat and it will be a nice afternoon to spend a few hours at the beach if you can fit that into your schedule.

I’ll be updating the forecast on Twitter @growingwisdom. Please follow me there.

Another front pushes through the areas Sunday night without much fanfare. There is a chance of a shower or two, but even more likely is we don’t see a drop of rain. Next week looks sunny and seasonably cool. If you didn’t have a frost this morning and don’t see one tomorrow morning you should be fine for a couple of more weeks.

The tropical Atlantic continues to be quite quiet. Edouard is now a tropical storm meandering around the north Atlantic, but will be dying out over the next several days. Otherwise there isn’t much else going on as our very quiet tropical season continues. Of course, the Pacific is still having an active year. Have a great weekend.

Copy the Story Link