Sunday, October 8, 2017

It’s Almost Time

October has arrived and some of my antsy friends are asking where is Fall already. As I write this at noon on October 8th the temperature in my front yard is 83 degrees and climbing. Don’t worry, friends and neighbors, fall will get here.

The question is; when will it get here. When I was growing up in Jacksonville, the first cool days of fall arrived with Halloween on October 31st, just in time for those costumes which were too hot for earlier in the month. I remember one year, as I planned for my Halloween costume, I decided to go as a “greaser.” I wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans and had a pack of candy cigarettes rolled up in my left sleeve. A little Brylcream slicked back my hair in something like a ducktail. I say “something like” because I’ve never had hair long enough to do a real “DA.” That year, Halloween in Jacksonville was really cold; must have been near 50 at dusk. Hey! In Jacksonville, 50 degrees is cold! At 45 degrees I would have my heavy coat, gloves and scarf on. It is Florida after all. Unfortunately, I did not have a leather jacket to keep the costume authentic. I did put on two t-shirts that evening but I still froze while trick or treating. I sure earned my candy treats that year.

Cool weather usually arrives up here in South Carolina a couple of weeks earlier; most often the second week of the State Fair. Not soon enough for me. The summer khakis of my Naval ROTC uniform were starting to really get to me. And of course, the heavy tunics and pants of the University of South Carolina Gamecock Band were real hot boxes. But come fair week, putting on a light jacket to head out to the fairgrounds for fun and food that was bad for you was a highlight. Some of the best times I had out there was doing radio and television remotes live from the fair.

So on October 18th, I’ll be out at the fair, spinning some tunes for the AARP Dance Party 10 AM – 3 PM in the Rosewoods Building. If you are in town that day, come on by and say Hi!

As you can see from this picture of the crowd at last year's AARP Dance Party, it was warm! Last year, it was not cool on “Senior Day” the day of the party, the second week of the fair. In fact it didn’t really cool down until around Halloween. I suspect that will be the case this year too as this summer is in the top ten warmest summers on record and my meteorologist friend, Jim Gandy told me last Thursday that we will be having a mild winter this year. Wait a minute you say, “How can this summer be one of the warmest when we did not break 100 degrees all summer long?” The answer is simple; the nightly low temperatures continue to rise year after year. That means the average temperature is trending warmer. So the weather here in Columbia now is more and more like what I used to see in Jacksonville growing up.

Another thing that I noticed this year was that there were more summer days with tropical looking skies, as opposed to the typical haze filled atmosphere that we’ve been seeing the past few years. Sure there were still some “white sky” days this summer but they seemed to be diminishing. I just had a flashback of frolicking around the isothermal layer in a Piper Cherokee 140, playing tag with the few small puffy clouds that always hung out there. In the summertime, that boundary marked the change from the bumpy, thermal driven air at the surface and the smooth cooler air where the outside air temperature was at 32 degrees or lower. Now that was good flying, but you had to keep your head on a swivel looking out for someone else up there having fun.

So today, it is cloudy, warm and very muggy as the tropical moisture is swept into the southeast by what used to be Hurricane Nate which made a first landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana and then a second one on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi overnight. Hoping my friends out there are ok. It looks like we will be getting rain for the next couple of days with our highs nearly 10 degrees above normal and our lows 20 degrees above normal. As expected, this week with the State Fair beginning on Wednesday is forecast to remain warm. We’ll see if fall arrives on time next week. I think I will be happy that the dance party on Senior Day is inside with plenty of air conditioning to keep us all cool. No, I’ll not be wearing my “greaser” costume but I will be easy to spot. I’ll be the one with the corn dog and elephant ear. Oh MY!

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