It has been feeling
more like summer than fall across parts of the U.S. as high temperatures
soared to 10 to 20 degrees above average.
Tuesday’s 84-degree
high at Maryland’s BWI-Marshall Airport broke a 71-year-old mark for the
day. Decades-old records also fell in Wilmington, Delaware, and Trenton, New
Jersey. Atlanta tied a record of 86 degrees Tuesday.
The summerlike
warmth was continuing Wednesday in the Northeast, Southeast and southern
Plains. Jim Bunker, the observing program leader in the National Weather
Service’s office in Mount Holly, New Jersey, expects Thursday to be “another
opportunity for some record warmth” ahead of a weekend cooldown.
"We’ve got a good
high pressure setup that’s bringing this nice southerly wind and southerly
flow up and that’s why we’re warm like we are,” Bunker said.
Could the brief
warm spell be a sign of things to come as winter approaches?
The weather service
is set to release its latest long-term forecast on Thursday, but Bunker says
meteorologists have so far called warmer than usual weather in the
Northeast.