Indian Summer?

Happy Halloween and happy Indian summer! Given our latitudinal constraints it is difficult to imagine us having a much better weather treat for the last day of October. The thermometer should top out around 70 degrees today as southwesterly breezes bring warm air up from the, uh, southwest. There's a slight chance of rain for late tonight, but we don't foresee any rainfall during prime trick-or-treating hours or while the parade is taking place. The warmth and slight chance of rain continues until a weak cold front sweeps through town tomorrow. Thursday is a transition day. Friday and the weekend are likely to be clear and chilly.

Indian summer is a weather phenomenon like the January thaw that exist more in myth than in reality. If you look at the definition of Indian summer on Wikipedia you'll see the very wishy-washy "a name given to a period of sunny, warm weather in autumn, not long before winter. This time can be in late October or early November… usually sometime after the first frost. It can persist for just a few days or weeks." (emphases from Gothamist). As a general scientific rule, if something can't be defined to occur within a couple of weeks, or its duration can be longer than the window of its occurrence, that phenomenon probably isn't real. Nonetheless, we will take a couple of warm days this time of year!

As a coincidence, Indian summer is happening at the same time as Winter Weather Awareness Week (WWAW). If you can get past the horror of how the WWAW looks, you'll find all sorts of interesting and useful facts to help you prepare for winter. Today's discussion is about heavy snow events, which are defined as at least six inches of snow in 12 hours or eight inches of snow in 24 (and, yes, we know we shouldn't mix spelling the numbers out and using arabic numerals). New York City has averaged close to forty inches of snow per season the last four winters. That's almost double the long-term average. Tomorrow: Ice storms!

Today's high temperatures from the National Digital Forecast Database.