Fall colors have been disappointing
Here we are at the end of October and still little if any color in our forests and woodlands. Tour buses and country roads filled with tourists coming to see the colorful leaves only to find the scheduled big fall color spectacular show a disappointment. My wife and I have lived in the mountains for almost 50 years and have never seen so little color so late in the season.
A few days ago on a trip from Uniontown to Cumberland, Maryland, we were hard pressed to find a single red maple tree and the entire journey was full of muted and dull forest color. The trend in recent years has been for the colors to arrive later and later and this may be a consequence of our changing global weather patterns.
We still have large areas of green leaves and I am hopeful that some of these will give some color in the coming days; however, we also have large patches of trees with the leaves already on the ground and large sections of just brown leaves that were affected by the recent frost and freeze. If this trend were to continue in future years, it could have an effect on the tourism industry we so much need in this area.
This sure has been an odd weather year with a mild winter followed by lots of cold and snow in April and almost 15 inches of rainfall above our average. October started off like summer with a week of 80 degree weather, but abruptly changed to a very cold pattern with temperatures the past two weeks in the 50s. This cold pattern looks to continue for the balance of the month and into early November.
A west coast hurricane looks like this weekend it will move into Texas and then into the eastern states, bringing more rain to an area that is already water logged.
Temperatures the last few days of October should average 60 degrees in the afternoon and 40 in the morning; however, we will be lucky to see the 50s for afternoon highs.
On Oct. 29 1965, the thermometer in Uniontown dropped to 18 degrees. In the mountains, it was in the low teens.
Record high for the last week of October was 85 on Oct. 27 in 1945. Five to ten inches of snow blanketed Southwestern Pennsylvania on Halloween in 1993.
This past week, we saw our first hard frost and freeze across the area, bringing an end to the growing season, except for well protected areas in urban areas, which sometime hold on until around Thanksgiving.
We recorded a low of 27 degrees on two mornings last week at Chalk Hill and temperatures in the low 30s were common even in the lower elevations.
In the short term, the forecast for this coming week looks to be on the cold and wet side, but longer term, November is forecast to be a bit warmer than usual with rainfall continuing above average. Let蘑菇视频 hope for a bit of Indian summer weather after the cold and rain.