Unseasonably warm weather was experienced across portions of the state on Monday, with locations near the coast reporting high temperatures in the upper 80s to 90 degrees, up to ten degrees above normal. The National Weather Service (NWS) station at the Charleston International Airport recorded a maximum temperature of 88 degrees, tying the daily record high set in 1943 and 1990. These temperatures gave way as a dry cold front moved through the area on Monday evening, with breezy conditions and wind gusts around 20 mph.
By Tuesday morning, temperatures had dropped into the upper 30s and low 40s. Despite clear skies, daytime highs only reached the mid-to-upper 60s at most locations, which were ten to fifteen degrees below average. With dry high pressure centered over the Midwest on Wednesday, the coolest air mass of the season settled over the region, and these cooler-than-normal temperatures persisted through the rest of the work week. While morning temperatures on Wednesday were like those on Tuesday, afternoon temperatures topped out at the low to mid-60s across the state. Thursday morning, temperatures were up to twenty degrees below normal, with near-freezing temperatures recorded in portions of the Upstate and patchy frost observed in the Midlands and Pee Dee.
Over the weekend, high pressure slowly shifted eastward toward the mid-Atlantic and offshore. Under an abundance of sunshine, high temperatures started to rebound to values closer to normal for the middle of October, and the warming trend continued through the weekend. The tidal levels at the Charleston Harbor gauge ranged between 7.17 and 7.48 feet MLLW Thursday through Sunday, causing shallow to moderate saltwater flooding in low-lying coastal areas.
(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 | 0.00 | 46.09 | 8.9 |
| Greer Airport | 0.00 | 47.26 | 7.2 |
| Charlotte, NC Airport | Trace | 45.55 | 9.8 |
| Columbia Metro Airport | 0.00 | 45.72 | 7.8 |
| Orangeburg 2 (COOP) | 0.00 | 41.03 | -1.6 |
| Augusta, GA Airport | 0.00 | 39.38 | 2.6 |
| Florence Airport | Trace | 43.46 | 5.2 |
| North Myrtle Beach Airport | 0.00 | 43.78 | 2.9 | Charleston Air Force Base | 0.00 | 47.86 | 2.5 |
| Savannah, GA Airport | 0.00 | 49.28 | 7.7 |
| *Weekly precipitation totals ending midnight Sunday. M - denotes total with missing values. s - denotes total with suspect data. |
4-inch depth soil temperature: Clinton: Not Available. Columbia: 67 degrees. Barnwell: 60 degrees. Mullins: 60 degrees.
During the period, little to no rain fell across the state, with less than a quarter of an inch of rain reported in isolated areas of the Pee Dee region. Some locations have not received any rainfall since the passage of Tropical Cyclone Helene, with the NWS stations at Columbia Metropolitan Airport, Florence Regional Airport, and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport not reporting measurable rainfall in twenty-three days. Due to the lack of rainfall since Tropical Cyclone Helene passed, abnormally dry (D0) conditions continued to be observed in the state, mainly in the Lowcountry and interior portions of the Pee Dee region, as reported by the U.S. Drought Monitor map released on Thursday, October 17.
Due to the multiple periods with little to no measurable precipitation, the 14-day average streamflow values at most of the gauges across the state’s watersheds dropped to normal streamflows for this time of year. A handful of the Coastal Plain gauges reported slightly above-average flows, including the streamflow gauges on the Lower Savannah River and the Santee River at Jamestown. River height gauges dropped below the action stage in the Coastal Plain, and the king tide caused the tidal gauges to reach minor to moderate flood stage in the latter half of the period.
