By now you all know what time it is. You woke up to a seasonable chill running its spider fingers down your spine; a disembodied wail echoing from the empty attic overhead; impish winds howling at your windows and spirits slamming doors just for kicks. It's October 1st, the official beginning of Spook Season, meaning a very haunted will time will soon be had by all — if it's not being had already.
Here's you:
One might expect that, with ghosts running the show, the temps would begin to settle into something a little more like the inside of a tomb. Wrong, unfortunately! Dead wrong. While today feels appropriately autumnal, what with this corpse-like pallor cast over the sky, tomorrow will flash us back to July. And that, my friends, is the spookiest thing of all.
Right now, we're working with temps in the mid-to-low 60s, which feels pretty okay for the very beginning of fall. But soon, the witches will hoist this cauldron we're swimming in over the fire, heating things up to an eerie 84 degrees. Overnight, the air outside should cool to the low 70s, but come morning, The Weather will drag us straight to hell.
Tomorrow's projected high clocks in around 89 degrees by 2 p.m., a particularly scary proposition when compared to the area's historical average for October 2nd (low of 55, high of 69). We haven't seen an October 2nd this hot in 92 years, and meteorologistss blame the spike on a "high pressure ridge" creeping across the East, as severe and snowy winter storms tap-dance through the West.
I am calling this Zombie Summer, and we should all be afraid. One consequence of the mounting climate crisis is that traditionally cooler seasons — your autumns, your winters — will become warmer, and shorter. On the one hand, this is distressing because fall is the best season, and it has never been long enough; on the other, more urgently waving hand, we are already hurtling toward our apocalyptic future at an untenable rate, and doom is on the doorstep unless we as individual humans, and also collectively as nations, start making some 180s yesterday. So, consider Zombie Summer a harbinger of the hellscape to come:
Fortunately, Wednesday's hot flash may be washed away by spectral storms, and as the ghoulish winds come gusting in, temps should return to a more comfortable high-50s, low 60s bracket. We should wallow here, in an atmosphere that approximates the middle of a damp leaf pile, as the weekend winds down. Then, the workweek could kick off with a high of 70 degrees on Monday. Yes, it'll probably feel kinda swampy inside that Jack-o-Lantern you jammed on your head for ambiance, but we all suffer for our art.
