Turn a Weather Eye

As many haunters remember -- particularly in the northeast -- last year's Halloween was marked by some pretty disastrous weather, from gale force winds to torrential rains. I recall checking the Farmer's Almanac last year and it had fairly correctly predicted what the weather would be, so I put it on my list of things to do to check in again this year.

However, the Old Farmer's Almanac only gives a two-month window so I had to wait until now to check in and it looks like we're going to be in for it again. Although it says the New York/New Jersey region -- the "Atlantic Corridor" as it calls it -- will only experience 1.5 inches of rain for the month, some 2 inches below normal, it's pretty much scheduled to rain almost every week of October, and the 30th and 31st will be "rain, warm."

FWIW, the forecast for September 9-16 was listed as "T-storms, then sunny, warm" and the thunderstorms only just pulled out a little while ago. They were brief, but they did come through and that's what the Almanac predicted.

Of course, that rain forecast can mean a lot of different things. When the Almanac says "rain," it doesn't specify whether it will be a drizzle or will instead spawn Ark-like conditions (hey, they might be good, but can they really be that good, the current T-storm prediction not withstanding?).

And as many probably are aware, there's another "Farmer's Almanac" too, that's probably been around just as long (or maybe it's been around longer, I get the two confused) and its forecast is drearily similar (but it predicts some heavy wind gusts from the 8th to the 11th, so you may want to tie your props down especially tight those days). Its forecast for Halloween, which runs from the 28th to the 31st, is "fair, then showers." 

Sounds like us New Jersey-area haunters are going to have another wet Halloween. Sigh.