Unseasonable warmth rolls right into November as temperatures for Friday and Saturday remain upwards of 8-10° above normal for the start of the final month of hurricane season before a front cools things off slightly for Sunday. Overall, expect highs in the 80s on Friday and Saturday after starts in the low to mid-60s. A mix of sun and clouds will continue across the area, with perhaps a bit more sunshine on Saturday before a backdoor front moves by on Sunday, cooling us off a few degrees and thickening cloud cover once more.

Measurable rainfall remains extraordinarily difficult to come by; a few spots have had some sprinkles from time to time, but that’s about it. In fact, October 2024 is going to go down as the second-driest October on record with only 0.03″ of rain measured at the airport on October 4, and only traces of rain on a few occasions since then. This is second only to October 2000, when only a trace of rain was recorded that month. Records at the North Charleston climate site at the airport go back to 1937. As you can imagine, drought is developing over the area, and this week’s Drought Monitor puts much of the Lowcountry into moderate drought, while the rest of the state (except for a sliver of Lancaster and York counties) is now into Abnormally Dry conditions. We could certainly use a bit of rain, and none seems likely through at least the middle of next week.

Expect quiet weather for Halloween this go-around as high pressure remains the dominant weather feature across the Lowcountry. It’ll be a mild one this year as temperatures start in the low 60s, warming to the low 80s in the afternoon under partly cloudy skies. The only concern may be if costumes run a little warm!

We’ll keep this going into the weekend. Maybe a shower Friday, but otherwise quiet weather continues with upper 70s to low 80s for highs each afternoon.

After a coastal trough pushed ashore with a trace of rain (or more in a few lucky spots), the weather turns quiet once again on Wednesday, with another stretch of dry weather expected well into next week. We start the day in the low 60s, with temperatures warming back to the low 80s in the afternoon under partly cloudy skies. We’ll copy, paste, and delete a few clouds for Halloween, starting once again in the low 60s and warming to the low 80s in the afternoon. A few more clouds kick up for Friday ahead of a weakening front, but otherwise, temperatures do the same ol’ thing — low 60s to start, low 80s in the afternoon.

A small cooldown arrives this weekend, but that’ll take temperatures down from the low 80s to the upper 70s — definitely not a return to more seasonable weather, much less any sweater weather. The Climate Prediction Center continues to favor warmer than normal weather over the next couple weeks, while above-normal precipitation is a possibility heading into the second week of November. Stay tuned on that, though.

A surface trough will push inland Tuesday, and this could spread a few showers ashore throughout the day. Rain chances are pretty small, though, given the continued dry conditions, and any rain that does fall probably will not amount to a whole heck of a lot. Rain chances diminish by evening. Otherwise, expect partly cloudy skies. Temperatures will begin to trend back above normal, with upper 50s in the morning yielding to highs in the upper 70s in the afternoon.

A cool wedge of high pressure knocked temperatures down into the 60s on Sunday afternoon, but we should see temperatures begin to recover starting Monday, with above-normal temperatures favored for much of the upcoming week.

Cloud cover will scour out throughout the day Monday as ridging builds back in aloft. We’ll still be under the influence of the cool wedge of high pressure, which will keep highs right around the normal mark of 75° for late October after a mid-50s start.

Rain chances remain essentially nil this week, save for Tuesday, when a coastal trough could spread some light showers ashore. Much of us should stay dry, with measurable rainfall not looking like a great bet given the antecedent dry conditions. Highs on Tuesday head a few degrees above normal, back into the upper 70s after an upper 50s start.

The weather remains dry and much warmer than normal as we close October and start November. Expect highs in the 80s each afternoon starting Wednesday through at least Saturday with seasonably mild starts in the low 60s each morning as high pressure continues to be the primary weather feature. Skies will generally be partly cloudy each day. Suffice to say, we’ve got no weather concerns for trick-or-treaters this year. A front slips by over the weekend with a slight cooldown, but moisture appears to remain at a premium, keeping rain chances virtually nil.

Finally, we fall back to Standard Time this weekend. The morning daylight will be a little more in whack with sunrises before 7am until late November, but we’re back to “dark when we leave work” season once again. We’ll go from a 6:27 PM sunset on Saturday to a 5:26 PM sunset on Sunday. We continue to lose daylight until the winter solstice on December 21.

We’ll look to approach a record high on Saturday before a cold front swings through Sunday, cooling us off a bit and increasing cloud cover. (A shower or two may not be out of the question, either.)

High pressure at the surface and aloft hangs on for one more day on Saturday. We start the day in the mid-50s, but compressional heating ahead of the aforementioned front will help drive temperatures into the mid-80s. The record high of 87°, set in 1939, may be achievable at North Charleston, so we’ll keep an eye on this. A few clouds are possible, but sunshine should be the dominant feature once again.

Sunday will feature more clouds than we’ve seen in a while as the ridge moves out and a trough moves in overhead, driving a backdoor front through the region. We start around 60°, but only warm to 74° in the afternoon as winds shift northeasterly. Model guidance still does not totally rule out a shower or two across the Tri-County on Sunday, but most of us should expect the day to stay rain-free. Any rain that falls would be largely insignificant, too, perhaps in the hundredths of inches at best, so definitely not anything to get your hopes up over (if rain’s what you’re looking for, anyway).

Heading into next week, we stay cool for Monday but start to warm up again on Tuesday and beyond. Halloween will be on the warm side with lows in the low 60s warming to around 80° in the afternoon under mostly sunny skies. Alas, no sweater weather is in the foreseeable future as we head into November.

Warm weather continues for Friday into Saturday ahead of a front that’ll knock temperatures down for Sunday. High pressure aloft will help drive highs on Friday into the low 80s, while we may flirt with record highs on Saturday as temperatures head to the mid-80s. (The record high for Saturday at North Charleston is 87°, set in 1939.)

A front moves through late Saturday into Sunday. It’ll kick up a bit more in the way of cloud cover, and after starting the day around 60°, we’ll warm to just the mid-70s under partly cloudy to mostly sunny skies. There’s an outside shot that some of us may get a shower or two as the front gets by, but I wouldn’t bank on it. The cooloff won’t last too long; after highs bottom out in the low 70s Monday, we’ll be back in the 80s in time for Halloween.

Warmer-than-normal temperatures prevail on Thursday as skies once again stay on the sunny side. A slightly chilly start in the upper 50s yields to the low 80s in the afternoon; dewpoints in the mid-50s yield relative humidity values around 40% in the afternoon, so it should be comfortable. We keep this going into Friday and Saturday as well, with a bit of a cooldown Sunday with a dry cold front that kicks up cloud cover but little else.

If you’re looking for rain, the news isn’t great in the next seven days as dry weather looks to prevail. There’s a meager shot (10%) for precipitation on Monday in association with the front, but the vast majority of rain will stay offshore. The current forecast keeps us dry through next Wednesday. However, the Climate Prediction Center is giving us slightly above-average odds for above-normal precipitation as we head into November. We’ll see how that pans out; for now, even though it seems silly getting this late into Fall, seems like watering remains the order of the day for the plants you want to keep going.

Our stretch of dry and quiet weather will continue as we close out the work week (and beyond). Generally expect lows in the 50s to yield to highs in the low 80s each afternoon with a few passing clouds from time to time. A dry front gets through Thursday, and that will send the dewpoint a little lower as well as shave a couple degrees off Friday’s temperatures. Other than that, there’s really not much to talk about. Even the tropics are quiet: there’s no named storms in the Atlantic after Oscar dissipated earlier today, and there’s no current concern for any development in the next week.

Folks looking for cooler weather should look toward the second half of the weekend into early next week as a backdoor front moves across the area late Saturday into Sunday morning. This will cause high pressure to wedge southward, and temperatures will come down several degrees from where they’ve been. We could see an increase in cloud cover and maybe even a rogue shower early next week, but otherwise, dry weather prevails.

The status quo continues for our weather on Tuesday, and with the way things have been going, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Expect to start the day in the mid-to-upper 50s (warmer near the coast), warming to the low 80s in the afternoon under mostly sunny skies. (The normal high for October 22 is 76°, so we’ll be running a few degrees above climatology.) We’ll have a little bit of a northeast breeze once again, but nothing too bad.

The high tide at 12:45 PM should fall short of the 7′ flood stage in Charleston Harbor, though it’ll be a bit of a close call. We may still see some salt water encroach onto some of the more vulnerable roads as a result. Otherwise, that’ll do it for this cycle of coastal flooding. The next new moon arrives November 2, and we’ll watch around that time for additional coastal flooding concerns.