Today it rained and rained. Beautiful, wonderful, wet rain. We've had a lot of water restrictions lately due to the drought and we filled up loads of gallon jugs and empty cat litter containers. Hopefully that will help keep my flowers alive for all of the migrating butterflies without having to turn on the hose. 

We ought to send you some rain from the UK. We're currently having about a month's worth in the space of a couple of days...  

Summer has finally given up here, hurrah! Last night we had rain for the first time in two weeks (that is a long hot, dry spell for us at this time of year), and today is cloudy and much more comfortable. What a relief!

We are heading full into Autumn now, with trees more and more beginning to change colour, and farm machines as busy as bees. It looks like the reds of trees will be especially striking this year, yay! Whereas the past couple of years, they have been more muted (albeit still lovely). Already there many peeks of brights yellows, harvest oranges, deep reds, mixed in with that still rich green.

We have rain for the next few days, then towards the weekend a mixture of sun and cloud with very comfy temps, although still a few degrees above normal (which is late teens Celsius this time of year). Looking forward to when the temps are even cooler, both daytime and nighttime. That will come soon enough.  

Glad to hear your area has finally have rain too, fantasia!

We had rain yesterday in Michigan and we really needed it. The sunshine has returned today so the weather is really nice for taking hikes and looking at lighthouses.  That is what I did this morning. 🙂

I found this video of the Grand Haven Lighthouse on YouTube:

It is the same lighthouse that I visited this morning.

That looks awesome, @narnian78. I also like visiting lighthouses, on Lake Superior in my case.

The fall colors are just beginning here, though some spectacular colors are being reported near the North Shore of Lake Superior.

The days are rapidly getting shorter but summer heat hangs on, with highs over 80F/27C expected the rest of the month (the average high drops to 66F/19C). This will likely be our warmest September on record, beating the mark set just last year.

It's also been incredibly dry, quite a change from the summer rains. We've had only 0.06 inch (1.5mm) of rain all month, and no more is expected, so this will also break the record for dryest September ever (also set last year).

This weather does make for spending lots of time outside, and plenty of enjoyable stargazing in the lengthening nights. The morning sky is especially spectacular now, with bright Orion joined by blazing Jupiter and Mars.

I didn't notice that September was the warmest September on record, Down Under. It began to look as if temperatures would reach 30 degrees Celsius, last Wednesday, but nooo, the heat evaporated overnight. We had a cold snap overnight, bearing some much-needed rain. 

Spring has arrived but having taken off my cardigans & jumpers, I find myself putting them on again of an evening, or in the morning when temperatures feel like 10 degrees Celsius, even after the sun has risen for a while. Deep-fried ice-cream weather rules, that is to say, warm but with a cold centre. 

Beautiful, Narnian78!

'Though I said above that summer has finally given up here in Ontario, the temperatures remain a bit above normal, yet not as warm and dry as we had between September 9 - 22. We had much-needed rain a few nights ago - heavy downpours, beautiful thunder. This weekend, at the northern side of Hurricane Helene, there will be heavy clouds and some rain. Even today, our light cloud cover is from the edge of that hurricane. Thinking of those in its strong, devastating path down south!

Mid next week, the temps finally give way to that longed-for Autumn feel, with nighttime temperatures in the single digits, and daytime, mid-teens Celsius / around 60. More and more trees are beginning to show off their stunning colours. I love the thought of weeks and weeks of this beauty and cool, crisp weather ahead of us!

We're still stuck in summer. Hopefully we get a break soon. It's been 90-100+ since end of April here. 

Loving this Autumn weather here in SW Ontario. The next week (and probably onward through October) is going to be in the mid-teens Celsius (high 50sF) during the days, then at night—get a load of this!—mid single digitsC (early 40sF), with a chance of frost tonight ... our first notification that the ground may be lightly covered in that sparkling white stuff early tomorrow morning. This is grrrreat weather for my walks, absolutely indeed!  

More and more trees are blushing colour here, but a lot are still quite green, so our peak will definitely be well past Thanksgiving this year, with the unusual warmth and dryness we had in September.

There will be a mixture of sun and cloud (with storms this Sunday), along with periodic rain showers. Next weekend (October 11-14) is our Canadian Thanksgiving, so here's hoping the temps will remain about the same so we, along with our family who will be here, can eat outside (albeit with sweaters on ), have campfires, go on walks.

The days are rapidly getting shorter here, but temps still remain stuck in late-summer mode. It may reach 81F/27C here later this week, short of a record but still way above the average high of 61F/16C.

However, towns north of here reported lows of 27F/-4C this morning, so winter will get here eventually.

The fall colors are delayed here, perhaps because of the wet summer. But I've seen some spectacular pictures from the North Shore of Lake Superior.

It remains dry - about 6 weeks since we've had any rain to speak of - which is awesome to allow enjoyment of the warm fall days and lengthening nights. But almost half of Minnesota is now in a moderate drought condition, with the rest being abnormally dry. Quite a change from the wet summer!

The warm, dry weather is expected to continue to mid-October.

Posted by: @stargazer

The days are rapidly getting shorter here,

Here too, loving this! We, also, have been short of rain over the past month. However, that is changing late this Saturday evening, as a fair bit of rain moves in overnight and through Sunday (so much for our Thanksgiving campfire!), with a smaller chance of precipitation on Monday and Tuesday. Temperatures are really dropping on Sunday (high single digits Celsius / high 40s F). We were hoping to eat outside, albeit bundled up, on Monday, but may not be able to, as some of our group are more prone to cold.

We had frost yesterday morning. Sure enough, I bent down to touch the grass on my walk, and it was definitely ice. A few mornings before, when the low was 3C / 37.4F, the grass looked similar (sparkly!), but when I touched it, the droplets were still cold water, rather than ice. Very pretty, both vistas.

Autumn seems to become more beautiful with every passing year. Some types of trees have not yet begun changing colour, but many have, and colours are most everywhere one looks. My walks are A-1, with crisp temperatures at night, and glorious dark skies, leading into the dawn. That we have weeks and weeks of this type of weather is exhilarating! Then snow after that!  

First time going for an evening walk since early June tonight. 'Twas wonderful with Venus shining brightly while setting in the west. 10C / 50F, absolutely no humidity (very different from 10C in the summer!). Almost a crisp feeling tonight. A huge cloud mass is moving in, bringing rain, so it was very cool seeing it eat up the stars as it moved down from the NW. At many homes, there were Thanksgiving gatherings, which was lovely. (Ours is tomorrow and Monday with family.) Love-love-love Autumn!

We have a month and a half to Summer, which down this Australian side of the planet, is promised to be blisteringly hot, maybe humidly so, rather than actually warmer.

Spring, so far, is distinctly cool. It seems that as soon as it gets reasonably warm, say, 25 degrees Celsius, or little over, at lunchtime, the clouds come over, and we are back to the late teens & early 20's. This area around Sydney, is no better than stormy Melbourne weather, which might even be a tad warmer, for this time of year. 

By the way, do you, like us, have daylight saving in your part of the world?

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

By the way, do you, like us, have daylight saving in your part of the world?

In the UK we do — we're on BST (British Summer Time) at the moment, and will be changing the clocks back to GMT at the end of this month. That means it'll start getting dark by about 4 pm, which I find exciting and atmospheric (because it never gets dark that early in most of Australia, other than probably Tasmania), but most people who've grown up with it find it terribly dreary and won't stop moaning about it. But for me it means it's nearly Christmas and soon all the Christmas lights will be on in the cities and towns. Christmas lights make a lot more sense in a dark and cold time, rather than coming on in the summer as they do in Australia!  

Meanwhile, as Wagga will confirm, Australia has three time zones and not all of the states observe daylight saving time. When I lived in Brisbane, I was in the same time zone as my family (near Melbourne) during winter, but in summer I had to remember they were an hour ahead if I wanted to phone them, because Victoria has daylight saving and Queensland doesn't!

However, that's nothing to the time difference we have now, separated not only by about half the circumference of the globe but also by different hemispheres. Until recently it was a 9-hour time difference between me (British Summer Time, GMT +1) and my family (Australian Eastern Standard Time, GMT +10). Just recently they put their clocks forward to GMT +11, so it's currently a 10-hour time difference. As of Sunday 27th October, BST will end and we in the UK will revert to GMT, making my folks 11 hours ahead of me. Yes, it does one's head in a bit, and yes, one just gets used to it. (Actually, it's converting times between Australia and the US that really breaks my brain. ) It helps a lot that we now have smartphones and so on that can show the time in different locations around the world instantly!

Ooh yeah, and as this is the Weather thread, I'd better mention that today in North West England, the sky is wall-to-wall overcast but no rain predicted until tomorrow, which is a nice change, sort of. We've had some lovely sunny spates at times, but they don't last long and it's been raining quite a lot. Not unusual for autumn — and it is lovely to see the leaves changing colour — but the annoying thing is that it rained for most of summer as well!!

Daylight time ends in the US at 2am on the first Sunday of November (the 3rd this year). As @courtenay mentions, that change means the sun sets really early all of a sudden, kind of a slap in the face that reminds us winter is coming.

Our first frost came last night, pretty much right on average, and we've had a few cool days, but summer has one last gasp this coming weekend, with temperatures possibly reaching 75F/24C once again (our average high this time of year is 59F/15C).

Our drought continues, and those clear days and nights mean lots of stargazing, especially handy since there is a comet to look at. By day, the fall colors are nearing peak here, and are so very pretty.