Lorton Rainfall Sept. 10-16; Summer's End

Summer ends this coming Saturday 9/22/2012 at 10:49 EDT when the tilt of the Earth’s axis becomes inclined in such a  way that the southern hemisphere gets more sunshine than our northern hemisphere.  In other words, winter’s coming, and it’s going to be more dark than light each day.  Sunrise and sunset are now roughly 7am and 7pm, and they’re progressing towards the 7:30am sunrise and 4:45pm sunset that we’ll experience in December when daylight savings time will have ended - it ends on the weekend prior to this year’s election, on November 4.  Our final week of summer looks to be more a foreshadowing of fall than a reprise of one of the hottest summers on record.  The accompanying graphic shows that temperatures will be below normal for our area and much of the country east of the Rockies.

With the exception of a sprinkle last Sunday that was in my gauge Monday morning, it was a dry week.  My rain gauge in Lorton recorded the following precipitation at 6am on the day indicated for the previous 24 hours: