October greets us with rain, wind
Fall may have started on Sept. 23, but it wasn’t until the end of the month that we finally saw a major pattern change in our weather. The warm and exceptionally dry weather of our summer season recently gave way to a much cooler, wetter pattern.
The month began with unseasonable low temperatures, with some locations in the Panhandle breaking records for lowest high temperature. Coeur d’Alene picked up the majority of its September rainfall in the last weekend, bringing the monthly total to only .62 inches, still far short of the average of 1.58 inches. We are definitely making up some ground this month, which has already seen soaking rains totaling .64 inches of rain in the first several days. The cool, wet start to October has also turned the tide for fire season. As of this past Wednesday, there were no active large fires across the entire Western United States. This is welcome relief for the previously fire-ravaged areas of Western Montana and Central and Southern Idaho.
It is a good thing we don’t have fires to worry about, as the winds have seemed to blow with a vengeance this past week. My backyard anemometer has been reading sustained 15 to 25 mph winds on an almost daily basis, with a peak gust so far of 32 mph (I should mention our house is on an exposed ridgetop at about 2,300 feet). I am almost afraid all this wind is going to strip all the leaves off my beautiful birch trees before they can really show off their dazzling fall colors.
Cooler weather has also meant that some of the higher elevations have seen their first snows. October is not a particularly snowy month for Coeur d’Alene, which averages .2 inches of frozen precipitation, and many Octobers have been completely snowless. What usually passes for early season snow is actually graupel, or soft hail. Yes it’s frozen, yes it’s white, and yes it gets lumped into the snow category (as does all sleet and hail) for climatological records. Graupel comes down hard though, it isn’t pretty, and is definitely in a different league than the gently falling fluffy flakes that we imagine in a wintry setting. In fact, while out in my backyard this past Wednesday, I recently got hit with a chunk of graupel during a small passing shower. The sun was still shining and the thermometer read 53 degrees.
October is also the month where some really frigid temperatures can sneak up on you. Sub-freezing temperatures in the teens and even single digits froze trick-or-treaters in 2002, 2003 and 2006. Average highs at the beginning of the month start out in the upper 60s and drop to the low 50s by months end. Average overnight lows fall a bit more gradually, from 41 degrees on Oct. 1, to 34 degrees on Oct. 31. Most folks are probably wondering about that first freeze or frost, trying to salvage what they can in area gardens before everything keels over. The first frost can actually occur well before air temperatures reach 32 degrees. Official thermometers are placed about 6 feet off the ground. Because cold air sinks, it can actually be much colder at the ground than at just a couple of feet up. Your thermometer may read 36 degrees, while subfreezing temperatures on the ground are causing frost to form on your plants. Usually the first freeze in Coeur d’Alene happens sometime between Oct. 13 and Oct. 27.