I have been waiting for a long time for the weather to change and inspire me to write a new blog entry, but we’ve been stuck in the same pattern for the better part of a month! We had some cool nights in September, but so far, we haven’t had our first freeze yet in Omaha. Instead, we’ve had a string of mild and pleasant days with pleasantly cool nights.
Maybe we’ve even had too many of them, as we saw the fire danger increase last week when some really dry air stuck around. Prairie fires are just as possible in the fall as in the spring. In both seasons, the vegetation is dry. In both seasons, we’re more likely to have a windy but dry weather pattern. In both seasons, farmers are out on equipment such as tractors and combines that can spark fires. We’ve seen a few small fires in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, but there was a bigger one last week out west, near the small town of Stapleton, Nebraska.
In our case, we’ve now had around a quarter to a half inch of rain through the weekend… but that was our first in several weeks, and we’re still behind the curve for fall rain. The humidity is up a little bit again. But we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
I found a better graphic for freeze dates than the one I posted in my last entry. Take a look here to see both the median (something like the average) first freeze date and also where freezes have occurred to date across the Midwest. The images are courtesy of my great friends at the Midwest Regional Climate Center.