Why has it been one of the driest Octobers in history for the Northeast?

Record-breaking drought is widespread across the Northeast, but why? AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish explains.

Transcript

00:00So why has this been so dry? And again, it's been so persistently dry. People have been saying,

00:04what's the deal with this? Why have we been so dry for so long? We've been in a weather pattern

00:09that has been generally, most days since late August over the past two months, resembling

00:14something like this. And overall, this flow has been basically just tamping down the Gulf moisture

00:23and preventing it from really migrating north. We get our wettest weather patterns when the Gulf of

00:28Mexico is sending moisture our way, and this has been the opposite. So again, cooler flow from the

00:33northeast has been keeping us drier. Current temperatures right now, we're only at 50 in

00:37Portland, but other areas like Charleston, 71 degrees here, very warm in advance of the front.

00:42This is our driest first 24 days of October in history in New York, in Fort Wayne, in Salisbury,

00:49Maryland. And we're tied with one other year for no measurable rain to this point in Philadelphia

00:54and in Nashville. But if we make it to the end of the month, Philadelphia will stand alone as the

00:59lone standing, only October on record in Philadelphia since the 1870s without any

01:04measurable rain. We haven't seen that in New York in history yet either, and we haven't had any

01:09measurable rain in New York yet with this pattern. Our front here, we're intentional in keeping the

01:13green far from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. No real widespread showers there.

01:18Look at this, very underwhelming sprinkles with future radar, maybe a couple of snowflakes up

01:22into the high ground of New York State and the Adirondacks and up into the Green and White

01:26Mountains. A couple of sprinkles here and there over the weekend, but we're staying dry farther

01:29south. So the dryness is a big story here. And with that wind that will follow our cold front,

01:35there will be some fire danger on Saturday. It will not be a good day to burn any piles of leaves,

01:41just too dangerous out there. You don't want that to take off and become a problem for the rest of

01:45your yard or your neighbor's home or so forth. So we're going to be cool out there on Sunday as

01:49the coolest air follows the front, comparing Saturday with Sunday. A lot of you may have some

01:55Halloween festivities here this weekend as we ramp up through the weekend before the big holiday.

01:59They're going to be coolest on Sunday, but breeziest on Saturday. So with the wind in

02:04there, it might feel kind of similar both days here for the accurate weather, real field

02:08temperature. Still dry out there on Monday, no surprise, Damien, but the southeast has also been

02:13very dry.