The weather in New England this time of year can be pretty wicked. And I don’t mean wicked as in “wicked awesome.” I mean wicked as in very scary.
Chief meteorologist Jeremy Reiner reminded us that this weekend is the 5th anniversary of “Snowtober,” the biggest snow storm of the entire winter 2011-2012 season. I was living in Florida at the time. I remember calling all of my relatives up here to check on them while also reminding them that I was in Florida. Thoughtful, I know.
This weekend also happens to be the 25h anniversary of the monster nor’easter that became known as the “Perfect Storm.” On this date in 1991 hurricane force winds battered our coast. According to the book “The Perfect Storm,” the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail is presumed to have sunk sometime after midnight on October 28 when the storm was still intensifying. By the way, that book by Sebastian Junger was required reading when I was in graduate school for meteorology. The National Climatic Data Center has more incredible stats on the storm which is also known as the “Halloween Storm.”
(satellite image from 8 AM EDT October 30, 1991)
And although the worst of the weather was in New Jersey and New York, I have to add Hurricane Sandy to the list of infamous storms that impacted New England around Halloween. This weekend marks the 4th anniversary of the “Superstorm” which brought record tides to CT. The National Weather Service has more of those stats.
(satellite image from the morning of October 29, 2012)
As this graphic from Climate Central shows, the warmest Halloween in Boston was in 1946 when we hit 81°. The coolest was in 1904 when we dropped to 27°. That sounds pretty extreme, but it could be worse. In their analysis, Climate Central found the most dramatic difference in record high and record low temperatures on Halloween is in Rapid City, SD, where the record high of 81°F was set in 1999 and the record low of -2°F was set in 1991.
By comparison, Halloween 2016 in New England will be pretty tame, but slightly cooler than average. The normal high temperature is about 57 °. We will top out at about 51° but more importantly, temps will drop very quickly after sunset. That’s 5:38 PM Monday evening by the way. Temps will go from the mid 40s in the 5 PM hour to the mid 30s late Monday night. At least it will be dry! So nothing too scary this Halloween.
After a brief cool down early this work week, it becomes wicked warm by Wednesday! Look forward to temps in the mid to upper 60s on Wed and Thur. There’s even a low possibility that some spots might hit 70! The record high for Boston on Thursday is 76° set in 1990, but that is probably out of reach.
Happy Halloween!