Sunny, dry and warmer-than-normal temperatures prevailed through the middle of the week with high pressure controlling the weather. High temperatures were in the mid-80s, while overnight lows were in the upper 50s across the Upstate to the low 60s near the coast. Smoke from Canadian wildfires filtered into the region on Monday, October 2, and kept skies hazy throughout the day. Also on Monday, the tidal levels at the Charleston Harbor gauge ranged between 7.48 and 7.62 feet MLLW, causing moderate saltwater flooding in low-lying coastal areas.
No significant weather was observed on Thursday, with surface high pressure still controlling the weather pattern. The sea breeze front triggered a few isolated showers across the Coastal Plain, but the skies were mostly sunny. A cold front approached and started to move through the region on Friday, producing scattered showers with limited widespread amounts of rain exceeding a tenth of an inch. Fair weather prevailed over the weekend after the dry cold front pushed through the state on Saturday. Temperatures were cooler on Saturday, with highs near normal, in the mid-70s and morning temperatures in the upper 40s to near 60, up to five degrees below normal.
Sunday morning was the coldest since the Spring, with minimum temperatures dropping into the low to mid-30s across portions of the Upstate and mid-40s elsewhere, up to fifteen degrees below normal. The National Weather Service station at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport recorded a low of 39 degrees; the last time the temperature dropped to less than 40 degrees at the station this year was April 25. Despite the mostly sunny skies, highs were about ten degrees below normal, with maximum temperatures struggling to reach 70 degrees. The cooler-than-normal temperatures and dry conditions continued through the first part of the work week.
(Note: The highest and lowest official temperatures and highest precipitation totals provided below are based on observations from the National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observer network and the National Weather Service's Forecast Offices.)| Weekly* | Since Jan 1 | Departure | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anderson Airport | 0.01 | 39.98 | 3.9 |
| Greer Airport | Trace | 45.14 | 6.4 |
| Charlotte, NC Airport | 0.01 | 36.40 | 1.9 |
| Columbia Metro Airport | Trace | 45.93 | 9.3 |
| Orangeburg 2 (COOP) | 0.00 | 47.47 | 6.2 |
| Augusta, GA Airport | 0.03 | 52.04 | 16.2 |
| Florence Airport | Trace | 39.70 | 2.8 |
| North Myrtle Beach Airport | Trace | 34.02 | -5.2 | Charleston Air Force Base | 0.00 | 43.49 | -0.2 |
| Savannah, GA Airport | 0.00 | 35.15 | -4.9 |
| *Weekly precipitation totals ending midnight Sunday. M - denotes total with missing values. s - denotes total with suspect data. |
4-inch depth soil temperature: Clinton: 74 degrees. Columbia: 72 degrees. Barnwell: 65 degrees. Mullins: 61 degrees.
Precipitation was scarce during the period, with most of the National Weather Service and CoCoRaHS stations recording less than a tenth of an inch of rain and many stations reporting no rain. The only exception was in Horry County, where CoCoRaHS observers near Myrtle Beach recorded the highest numbers of between half an inch and 1.20 inches from a storm on Friday. With multiple periods of limited rainfall, the US Drought Monitor (USDM) released on October 5 showed an increase in abnormally dry (D0) conditions across the Upstate and an expansion of moderate drought (D1) conditions across Abbeville, Anderson, Greenville, McCormick, Spartanburg, and Union counties.
The drier conditions led to a drop in the streamflow gauge values along most of the state’s rivers during the period. Gauges in the headwaters of the Broad, Catawba, and Saluda river basins dropped to much below normal values, while downstream gauges reported below-normal flows. At the same time, streamflow gauges across the Lowcountry continued reporting normal streamflow values, but flows had dropped off from the previous period. While the river height gauges across the state reported levels below flood stage, tidal gauges reached moderate heights on Monday due to the astronomically high tides.
