Today is the last day of meteorological summer. Some folks have asked me whether there is any relationship between summer conditions and fall ones. In the Southeast, the answer is “not much”. There is a positive correlation, so that warmer than average summers do trend towards warmer than average falls, but it’s not strong. You might think that this is due to the long-term warming trend that most of the Southeast has been experiencing since about 1960, but in fact this is based on detrended data with that increase removed, so that should not be a factor. You can read more about it at Brian Brettschneider’s article in Forbes.com here.

Correlation between summer (Jun-Aug) and Fall (Sep-Nov) temperatures (data detrended). Station data source: NOAA-NCEI.  BRIAN BRETTSCHNEIDER