Now for the bad (good) news (depending on your perspective). As you read this, our temperature curve has begun its inexorable descent toward winter. (Yes, it’s true!)
By the end of this month, Caribou’s average high is 71, but by the end of next month, September, it is 59, and by the end of October (Halloween!) the average high is down to 45.
The average high temperature at Caribou falls to freezing (32 F, 0 C) by November 29th, and reaches its minimum of 19 F on the 11th of January, remaining there through January 28th, before again (thankfully!) climbing.
Snowfall normals for Caribou by month break down like this (all numbers in inches):
September (0.1), October (1.6), November (10.5 — and raise your hand if you are old enough to remember the paralyzing Thanksgiving snowstorm of 1974!), December (22.9), January (25.2), February (22.2), March (18.3), April (7.4), May (0.5) for an annual average of almost 109 inches, or just over 9 feet.
On a warmer note, since we are still in summer after all, the eight consecutive days in the 80s at Caribou, through last Friday, was only the 10th time Caribou has seen a run of that length. Three times there have been runs of nine 80s in a row. Not since they started keeping records in 1939 has Caribou had a run of ten 80s in a row.
Finally, there has been much talk of El Nino, and it is important to remember that El Nino is but one of a number of larger scale climate drivers that dictate the weather we ultimately get. That being said, the two strongest El Ninos of the past 30-plus years actually saw winters with below normal snowfall in Caribou. In fact, Caribou’s record snowfall of almost 200 inches in 2007-08 occurred in a La Nina year. El Nino is a warming of the waters of the Eastern Pacific, while La Nina is a cooling of the waters in the same region.
(Note to the reader, this column used the words “average” and “normal.” These words, in climatology, mean a 30-year hunk of weather data at a particular place, averaged over those 30 years. So if over those 30 years, 3000 inches of snow fell, that would mean you averaged 100 inches per year. Also, averages are recalculated every 10 years. We are presently using the 1981-2010 data set, which will be replaced, eventually, by the 1991-2020 data set, and on it will go, decade-by-decade.)
Ted Shapiro holds the Broadcast Seal of Approval from both the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association. An Alexandria, Va. native, he has been chief meteorologist at WAGM-TV since 2006. Email him at tshapiro@wagmtv.com.
