Blog Article
NFL Sunday's Perfect Fall Weather, Explained
A dry high pressure system is giving NFL and ALCS fans great fall weather while South Florida floods and Hurricane Trudy winds down. Here's the full picture.
NFL Sunday, ALCS Nights, and the High Pressure Making This the Best Stretch of Fall Weather All Month
Alright folks, if you're grilling in a parking lot outside Lambeau Field right now, or you've got the ALCS on in the background while you watch Packers-Cowboys, here's something worth knowing. The sky you're looking at today is about as good as October gets, and there's a real meteorological reason why.
The High Pressure Doing All the Work
A strong, dry surface high has parked itself over the central Plains and Midwest, and it's been sitting there since this morning. Our in-house nice weather tracker actually found a small pocket of central Missouri and west-central Illinois hitting the PERFECT tier outright today. That's about as rare as it gets. Beyond that core, a huge stretch of the country, including the Great Lakes where Lambeau sits, is running NICE to BEAUTIFUL. Clear skies, light wind, dewpoints down in the upper 30s to mid 40s. That's the kind of dry air that makes a fall afternoon feel crisp instead of clammy.
Temperatures are sitting in the 60s across a lot of that zone. For context, Detroit's October normal high is 61°F with a low of 43°F, and that's a decent stand-in for what the broader Great Lakes region should feel like this time of year. We're not running hot or cold against the calendar. This is just a clean, textbook autumn pattern, and it happened to land on an NFL Sunday with a marquee game and a pivotal ALCS Game 5 between the Rays and Guardians both drawing huge interest tonight.
While the Midwest Soaks Up Sunshine, South Florida Keeps Wringing Out
Now flip over to South Florida, and it's a completely different story. Yesterday, afternoon storms dumped 3.5 to 5.5 inches of rain across northern Broward and southern Palm Beach counties, enough to trigger a Flash Flood Warning and leave water over the curbs in Parkland and Deerfield Beach. That same stalled frontal boundary is still sitting just offshore, and WPC has South Florida under a Marginal Risk for excessive rainfall again today. Unseasonably high moisture plus daytime heating plus onshore flow along the coast adds up to another round of heavy downpours.
If you've got outdoor plans tonight anywhere along the Atlantic side of Florida, including folks heading out for the DAX show in St. Augustine, keep an eye on the radar. A non-tropical low is also forming off the Southeast coast tonight and is expected to linger and strengthen through the middle of the week. There's even some chance of subtropical development. Regardless of whether it gets a name, this system is going to bring coastal flooding, rough surf, and gusty winds to the Carolinas, the Outer Banks, and the Virginia Tidewater through the next several days. If you've got beach plans or you're tracking logistics for something further out like the Breeders' Cup in Lexington on October 30, it's worth keeping tabs on how this coastal system behaves this week, since Kentucky sits downstream of a lot of this pattern's eventual breakdown.
Hurricane Trudy's Last Stand
Out in the East Pacific, Hurricane Trudy is a Category 2 storm with 98 mph winds sitting about 105 miles southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Mexico. Hurricane Hunters flew into the northeast eyewall this afternoon and found the storm's cloud pattern already starting to lose organization. Increasing wind shear is expected to drive rapid weakening tonight. Trudy's closest forecast approach to Cabo San Lucas comes Wednesday, and by then the intensity drops to around 23 mph, basically a dissipating remnant. No US impacts are expected from this one. It's just the tail end of a very active couple weeks in the East Pacific that also saw Hurricane Simon and Hurricane Rachel earlier this month.
Catch the Sky Show Monday Night
Here's a bonus for anyone staying up late after tonight's games. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has a G1, or Minor, geomagnetic storm watch out for Monday, October 20, as effects from a coronal hole high speed stream build in. G1 storms are modest, so don't expect a repeat of anything dramatic, but if skies stay clear under that same high pressure ridge, folks up in the northern tier, think Wisconsin, Michigan, and the Dakotas, have a shot at catching some aurora activity low on the northern horizon Monday night. Worth a look if you're already out walking the dog.
The Takeaway
This calm, dry, good-for-tailgating pattern isn't permanent. Our extended outlook shows a Pacific storm system pushing into California by Thursday, a Mountain West storm behind it this weekend, and that coastal low off the Southeast steadily chewing into the nice weather along the Atlantic seaboard. So if you're outside today enjoying a crisp fall afternoon, whether that's Lambeau Field, your own backyard, or a tailgate lot somewhere in the Midwest, take it. The pattern's about to get more complicated, and this stretch of clean autumn air won't stick around forever.