Warm & Dry

 There doesn't appear to be any rain or snow heading to Salmon Country in the next week and possibly not for the remainder of the month.  September is essentially half over this weekend.  The CLimate Prediction Center's 6-10 day and 8-14 day maps show above normal temps and below normal precip over both periods.  We check NOAA's Air Resource Lab and there's no precip shown for the next week.  The five day QPF graphic shows the entire West as basically bone dry.  (QPF = Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) You can see that graphic below, too.  September's not exactly a "wet" month for Salmon Country to begin with but this particular September basically looks to be warm and dry, if not hot & parched.  More comments below all the graphics.

We took a look at the September climate statistics for Stanley back when we were intently covering the Halstead Fire.  Since there were so many updates happening each day, we doubt very many readers had a chance to review this information.  Even a so-called "normal" September isn't much to write home about when it comes to precipitation.  Here's what we had to say a couple weeks ago:


July through the end of October is the driest part of the year for Stanley.  During that time, an avg. of 2.85 inches of precip is logged, or 21.6% of the annual avg. of 13.17 inches.

"What about September?  The current month's avg. high is 68.6 and the long term avg. low is 27.2.  The highest temp ever recorded in Stanley for September was 89 degrees in 1988.  The lowest was +9 in 1985.

Avg. precip is 0.78 inches (just over 3/4 of an inch). The one day max precip was 1.00 inch on September 1st, 2000. Over the long term, September has seen months with no precip whatsoever.  In 1987, Stanley recorded a September precip of 3.10 inches, which included 5.5 inches of snow.  Avg. snowfall in Stanley for September is less than a half-inch.

On the long term, September typically has five days when precip greater than a hundredth of an inch falls but only two days when precip greater than a tenth of an inch falls.  Overall, precip in September is highly variable as the first graph shows.  The second temperature graph clearly shows the peak of heat of 2012 is past as temps begin their decent into the upcoming depths of winter.  The record low ever recorded in Stanley was -54 on December 23rd, 1983."

Here are a couple of graphics for Stanley weather in September.  Basically Salmon's climate is pretty much the same only warmer.  As far as precip, the same could be said for Salmon as is the case for Stanley.  Links to the weather data sites are below the next two graphics.

You can click on any graphic to see a larger version.  Right click any graphic to save to your computer.

Here's the links

Stanley Climate Statistics
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?idstan

Salmon Airport Climate Statistics
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?id8076

Salmon KSRA Climate Statistics
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?id8080