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GREEN BAY, Wis. (WGBW) – Marking the mid-point of an astronomical season on All Hallows Eve, here’s scary the weather extremes we’ve experienced.
October 31st marks the date of an astronomical “cross quarter”. A day which under traditional agricultural calendar systems marks the mid-point of an astronomical season. These days were prominent in many cultures and widely celebrated with feasts. Today, everyone recognizes the 31st as Halloween, but few know its significance in ancient cultures.
To the Celts, it represented the beginning of the long nights of winter and with those came dark connotations of death and suffering. Their observance was eventually Christianized into All Saints Day, preceded by All Hallows Eve, a time to remember the souls of those who died during the previous year. So if you see ghosts n goblins prowling your neighborhood that evening, you better give them treats!
With only 10 hours of daylight, the longer and colder nights truly do start to settle in then. So with that said, is a white Halloween really out of the question?
If you remember just last year we had flakes flying through the Fox Valley and Appleton piled up 4.5”!
For Green Bay it was just 5 years ago, the snowiest all Hallows Eve on record was set. In fact it was the first white Halloween that the Packers town had in 124 years! Picking up a ghostly 1.9” of the wet white stuff. Which broke the old record of 1” set back in 1895.
That same storm dumped 5.6” into areas by the lake, making it the snowiest October in 132 years.
For the witch’s brew last year temperatures were held with a spell in the 30s. And bone chilling wind chills were creeping us into the 20s. The year prior to that, we were freakishly warm and hit highs in the upper 60s! In fact, in 2022 it was the warmest Halloween that we’ve had in 66 years! What a weather 180.
Average temperatures for the end of October usually flirt with 50 during the day and plummet to the freezing mark by night.
The record warmest October 31st hit 74 degrees way back in 1950, which if you’re wondering, was an El Nino year.
Get this, six years later in 1956 in a moderate La Nina, and that one locked second warmest at a fiery 72 degrees. Not to mention, 67 degrees seems to be a common top 10 temp too. It hit that 7 years in total.
In terms of the coldest, the frozen tundra only climbed to 18 degrees back in 1917. The spooky news is, climate change is taking the chilling effect out of Halloween. Since 1970, October nights in have warmed by 2.3°F in Green Bay. That means our nights of trick-or-treating are likely to be warmer than in the past.
With that said, do we have the wettest Halloween on the line this year? The current record of 1.44” of rainfall was set not too long ago, in 1960.
Right now we have a storm brewing and taking aim on the state mid-week.
Temperatures are expected to reach the 50s and fall into the 30s overnight. So it’ll be a typical and average Halloween holiday. All we can hope for is some natural eerie fog.
Don’t let the weather play tricks on you!
