So far, it's been Octobrrr

You've turned the furnace on earlier than you wished, your golf game got canceled — and you're already eyeing a new sweater.

If it gives you any comfort, you've been through the coldest start to October on record.

Regional offices of the National Weather Service crunched the numbers Thursday. They found that the combined average daytime-nighttime temperature in the first 14 days of the month was an astonishing 12 to 15 degrees below normal.

That's based on records dating back from 50 to more than 100 years, depending on the time period evaluated by each office.

The December-like weather is leaving, though, and soon.

Near-normal temperatures are expected to arrive this weekend and generally remain through most of the rest of the month, forecasters say. If that occurs, Omaha-area residents will be seeing daytime highs in the 60s.

“It's all perspective, but it's going to feel like summer on Sunday when it hits the 60s to around 70 degrees,” said Mike Moritz, senior meteorologist at the weather service office in Hastings, Neb. “It's going to be a great, great feeling.”

Tom Kines, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc., The World-Herald's weather consultant, said a couple of factors contributed to the unseasonably cold weather.

With the jet stream on a more southerly track, polar air has been able to flow across the heart of the country unimpeded.

Another major factor: cloudy skies.

So far this month, most of Nebraska has seen just one day — Oct. 7 — when clouds filled less than 10 percent of the sky, according to the weather service. That's the one day that temperatures across the state generally topped 70 degrees.

Cloud cover is also the reason that daytime temperatures, rather than nighttime ones, drove the record-setting cold.

In Kearney, for example, the average daytime high, 49.7 degrees, was 19.4 degrees below normal, according to the weather service. By contrast, the average nighttime low, 34.3 degrees, was 7.6 degrees below normal.

Kines said daytime cloud cover has kept the sun from heating the atmosphere. At night, clouds did the reverse, acting as a blanket and keeping the day's lingering warmth close to the ground.

The cold air is affecting everything from heating bills to family outings.

The Metropolitan Utilities District reports that natural gas usage is up 34 percent over a normal October. The good news, according to MUD, is that the utility's October gas price is the lowest it has been in seven years.

Area climatologists say they've heard all the jokes about global warming.

“Where's global warming? It's out there,” said Ken Dewey, applied climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “We just happen to be the exception to the rule.”

The oceans, he noted, are the warmest they've been in recorded history. And September, globally, was the second-warmest on record and Canada's warmest.

This despite Nebraska and Iowa seeing not only record cold in October, but one of the coolest summers on record.

“It's not called Nebraska warming,” Dewey said. “It's called global warming.”

Contact the writer:

444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com

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