In October 1947, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodges four games to three to win the World Series and Chuck Yeager piloted the Bell XS-1 in the first supersonic flight.
The official temperature in Berks County on the days those events occurred, the 6th and 14th, respectively, reached 80 degrees. In fact, the temperature reached 80 degrees on 10 days that month en route to the warmest October on record in Berks — and it still is.
It was also a fairly dry month with below normal rainfall, at 1.88 inches.
For a time, this month looked like a contender to knock off the October champ from 74 years ago but a return to seasonable conditions has pushed the average temperature down and will likely continue to push it below the monthly mark of 62.6 degrees from 1947.
Through Friday, this month’s average temperature is 63.6, down from a peak of 65.7 a week ago.
“We know this October has been running much warmer and drier than normal,” said Berks weather historian Jeffrey R. Stoudt. “Days still remain during which those anomalies could be blunted.”
Stoudt plugged in the AccuWeather forecast temperatures for the remainder of the month and the overall month average comes to 61.0.
“A final average of 61.0 would be good for fourth warmest,” he said. “However, the final average values are rather tightly packed. So even a modest departure from 61.0 could result in a movement of a few places up or down.”
There have been four 80-degree days this month.
“Warmth this October has been rather modest but frequent and not expected to be significantly offset by any really cold weather,” said Stoudt, a retired meteorologist and founder of the Berks Area Rainfall Networks. “Temperatures neither hot nor cold are likely going forward.”
In 1947, the staff at the U.S. Weather Bureau office at Fifth and Courts streets was astonished at the October weather, writing in the monthly synopsis that, “this is the warmest October in our 75 years of records” and “(It) exceeded the previous record, 60.3 degrees, established in 1920, by 2.3 degrees.”
Such a margin is very large in weather records.
They also noted: “In our 35 year record of sunshine percentage, this is one of the five sunniest Octobers.”
This month hasn’t been as sunny but it has been dry.
“Precipitation of 0.31 (inch) would be good for third driest if October should end with that,” Stoudt said. “A pair of vigorous troughs this coming week are expected to bring one or two soaking rains. One to 1.5 inches look likely early next week, with potential for even more. Therefore, the prospect for a very dry October is likely to go down a drain.”
The official site in Berks has been the automated equipment at Reading Regional Airport since February 1999.
The current database for temperature starts with 1898. The Weather Bureau staff’s account suggested the meteorologists had data back to 1872. It’s unclear why that extra data hasn’t survived.
The precipitation database in Berks begins with 1869.
The 1940s were a mild period. The decade still holds numerous date records for warmth and monthly temperature marks and top 10 finishes.
Source: Berkshire mont
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