Our last weekend of September is going to be fantastic. Average highs this time of year are now back into the 60s and to have a weekend of full sun and high near or even exceeding 80F is a real treat. As a matter of fact the entire nation east of the Rockies is going to experience fine summer-like weather this weekend. It’s going to be near 90F in Denver today and remain in the 80s this weekend. The map below shows the extent of the warm weather in the high temperatures for Saturday. Similar readings will occur Sunday, but perhaps a bit warmer in some areas.

The jet stream which was never very far into Canada most of the summer, especially August, has taken on a configuration more typical for the middle of summer. If this same upper air pattern had occurred 8 weeks ago, we’d likely be seeing close to record high temperatures in some areas of the United States and a bigger issue from our drought. The blue shades areas represent the flow of the jet stream.

You can see it just west of the Rocky Mountains, but then it disappears into Canada far to the north of our area. This allows arm and dry air to overtake the region and until this pattern breaks down, this won’t change.

Dry conditions
If you’re not a gardener or don’t have a lawn, you likely aren’t so aware of the dry conditions now going on in parts of Maine. All droughts or dry spells are not equal. While some areas are now in a moderate drought (southern New England), this classification has different impacts in September than it would in July.

Plants are beginning to go dormant for the winter now and the dry soil isn’t as bad for a dormant plant as it is for an actively growing one. This is why I encourage you to water your evergreens until the ground freezes as they are still losing water, while trees that drop their leaves are naturally protect themselves from the lack of moisture in the soil.

When will it rain?
There is definitely no rain through the start of next week. The models do have the threat of rain sometime Tuesday or Wednesday, but this next system could also pass out to sea south of the area. The system yesterday brought rain up to the south coast of Massachusetts, but we just saw some clouds. We will end September with under an inch of rain and this is about 66 percent below average, a dry month indeed.

I’ll be watching the trend of the models for how they handle next week’s chance of rain. If they start bringing the rain further north I’ll be a bit more confident in the chance of rain. There’s a saying that drought begets drought and this month this is certainly proving true. Enjoy the weekend. We can’t do anything about the lack of rain so you might as well embrace the amazing weekend of weather that lies ahead.

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