Project Weather: Fall Forecast

(NECN) - What is the weather going to be like as we head into the autumn season?

NECN's Weather Team has your fall forecast!

"There are several different angles we can look at the forecast from," said Matt Noyes.

"It's pretty important to look at the normal high temperature," said Danielle Niles. "Typically, we cool 34 degrees on average, from the mid to upper 70s in the start of September to the low to mid 40s at the end of November. And we're losing about four hours of daylight, so obviously, changes are afoot and it's important to look at those as we head into the fall season."

"It's important to look at the normal, but it's also important to look at where you just came from," said Nelly Carreno. "For June, we were almost seven inches above precipitation-wise in the Boston area. But more importantly, temperature-wise, we were more than two degrees above the average in June, more than three degrees in July, and August, we're about average, but it all leads toward a milder fall."

"I look to look at analog years, and previous to that wet June, we had some very cold weather that lined up well with 1944, 1954," said Tim Kelley. "We were breaking records from those years and in those years, we had very active hurricane seasons in fall with a possibility of a hurricane or two coming close to New England ... Also, if you look at what happened this summer at the north pole, it was very cold and icy, similar to the last occurrence like this in 2004. And In 2004, we had a very early snow with eight inches of snow the first week of November."

"Certainly, it looks like we should be in this continuation of an active and extreme pattern like what we saw for about a 30-year period starting in the 1930s," said Noyes. "Also, looking at similar years, I looked out at El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific Ocean to see how things stack up. And actually, there were three out of those four close-matching years that I found that we got two tropical systems each that hit New England. 1954, for example ... saw our last major hurricane in New England. That was Hurricane Carol, followed by Edna shortly thereafter. 1960, another close match, that brought Donna and Brenda through the region. 1961 follows closely, and that saw both Esther and Unnamed Tropical Storm 6. The only year similar to this year that didn't bring a strike from the tropics was 1978, which still saw a very busy season, but all missed New England."