Summer soon to be just a memory
Fall officially begins on Monday. This last week of summer has provided us with a “last hurrah” of sorts, with scorching weather across the region and even a few record high temperatures last Wednesday.
Colville tied a record high of 92 degrees that day, while Plummer tied a record high of 83 degrees the day before.
Though records were not broken in Spokane or Coeur d’Alene, many surrounding locales saw highs in the 90s, including the Coeur d’Alene Airport, Post Falls, Rathdrum, Kellogg and Spokane Valley. By the time the Oct. 1 rolls around, 90-degree heat will be a mere memory. The record high in Coeur d’Alene for the month of October is 87 degrees which occurred on Oct. 8, 1943. That same year on Oct. 4, Spokane hit 87 degrees.
The cooler temps do not mean an end to area vegetable gardens, though. Average lows through the end of September for the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area are still up in the lower 40s, with the average low staying above the freezing mark until the last week of October. Hopefully Jack Frost will stay away long enough for everyone to milk their late ripening tomato plants for all they’re worth this season.
It has been a relatively dry month so far. As of the Sept. 17, both Spokane and Coeur d’Alene had received less than a tenth of an inch of rainfall. Spokane has actually fallen behind in average yearly rainfall by about an inch, while Coeur d’Alene is still holding on to amounts that are about 3 inches above normal. Current precipitation totals still dwarf the sparse amounts received last year during the parched August/September period.
As is usually the case with weather, however, when one area is thirsting for rain, another is receiving the deluge. Seven counties in northeastern Illinois were recently declared disaster areas due to record rains and the resulting floods. Chicago set a daily rainfall record last Saturday after receiving 6.64 inches. Storm total rainfall for areas of northeastern Illinois ranged anywhere from 5 to over 10 inches.
Surprisingly, these flooding rains in Illinois and other parts of the Midwest were not related to moisture from the remnants of Hurricane Ike, but actually from the remnants of the less-than-famous tropical storm Lowell which originated in the Eastern Pacific. Of course Ike contributed to plenty in the way of heavy rains and flooding from the South all the way up into the Ohio Valley.
Though folks in Southeast Texas received the brunt of Ike’s fury, the remnants of the storm wreaked havoc as far away as Cincinnati. Those folks probably had no idea that they could have benefited from a little “hurricane” preparedness. As the remnants of Ike merged with a frontal boundary across the lower Ohio Valley last Sunday, widespread damaging winds occurred, including 75 mph winds recorded at the Port Columbus International Airport in Franklin County, Ohio. An unofficial wind measurement of 84 mph was recorded in West Chester, Ohio, in Butler County. More than a million people were left without power, and three fatalities were reported.