CALIFORNIA, Ky. — The first day of fall arrives very close to midnight and the first official full day of fall is Saturday, Sept. 23. The sun will be directly over the equator at 11:50 p.m. Friday.
Northern California continues to lose daylight until the first day of winter in the third week of December.
This first day of fall is also known as the Autumnal Equinox, where for most of the world the day has equal day and night, close to 12 hours.
There will be more nighttime hours than daytime until the third week in March for the Spring Equinox.
Looking back at summer for Northern California, there were all sorts of highs and lows but will likely go down as fairly quiet in regards to extreme heat, low days of smoke, very few days of Red Flag Warning fire weather, and also some oddities like Tropical Storm Hilary making landfall in Southern California — the first storm to do so since the 1930s.
Sacramento did see moments of very hot temperatures. The hottest day in June was 112 degrees. The hottest day in July was 114 degrees. The hottest day in August was 112 degrees and the hottest day in September was 112 degrees, so far.
Most heat waves did not last very long but set a few records along the way.
Looking forward to fall this year is going to be different than most with a strong El Niño likely through the core winter and rainy months of December, January and February. While no El Niño is quite the same, the computer models that do rough forecasting months ahead indicate a wetter-than-normal pattern emerging for California, and drier for the Pacific Northwest. These are fairly common outcomes during a strong El Nino event.
Preceding the winter and fall weather during an El Niño event is not very statistically significant. Over the last 30 years, climate record keeping in Sacramento has indicated the core fall months of October, November and December have been warmer over the last decade as well as drier with a delay to more rainy conditions into the winter.
This year may forgo that trend with cooler temperatures into next week with rain chances for the beginning of next week.
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