In a year that has taken us from one extreme to another, it should come as no surprise that September has had a bag of tricks to throw our way, too. Jerry Stenger, a climatologist at the University of Virginia has given me some mind-boggling statistics from the first half of the month.

Let's talk temperatures first. So far this month, we've had seven days when the mercury hit or exceeded 90 degrees. If you average all of our high temperatures so far, we're running nearly 9 degrees above average! Of course, that number will likely come down over the second half of the month, but that just shows you how incredibly warm the daytime temperatures have been.

Now on to the rainfall, or lack thereof. We've only picked up 0.07” of rain through the first 15 days of the month. This is only 1% of our average September rainfall amount. If we were to end the month without seeing another drop of rain (hopefully this doesn't happen!), this would go down as the driest September on record – by a long shot. The next driest September was in 1985 when only 0.62” of rain fell (but that included the entire 30 days). Also of note, if we weren't to see any more rain this entire month, this would go down as the second driest month in Charlottesville -- ever. Only one month was drier and that was October of 2000 when only 0.01” of rain fell over the entire month!

Looking over the long range models, rain chances don't look too good for the next week to ten days. We'll keep hoping for rain and thinking cool thoughts...After all, fall is less than a week away!

Brantley