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Answer: There isn't a real obvious link back to an ancient Latin or Greek term as is the case with many modern words, but some etymology resources do cite a Greek word, aithria, that today would mean "good weather" and a later, more general term for weather, kairos. It isn't clear whether those words led in some direct way to later European terms like the Old Saxon word wedar, the Old Norse term vethr, or the Old High German and Old English words wetar and weder, but one can certainly relate that group of terms pretty well to the current form of the word in English, along with the current German wetter and Dutch weder.
Nov. 19, 2009 | Tags: general meteorology, past weather

Answer: If you take eight years literally and go back that far from the date this answer is being added to our database, then we have not fallen into the single digits at all during that span. However, if you reach back a little farther, the most recent occurrences of single-digit lows at the airport were in January 2000 in the wake of a major snowfall, when the temperature dipped to 1 degree Fahrenheit on the 28th and 7 degrees on the 29th.
Nov. 18, 2009 | Tags: cold, past weather, records/extremes

Answer: You don't say what part of our viewing area you live in, but as an example you can use our Almanac page and the "Get Historical Data" feature to begin your search with any day during that fall. Once you are there, click the "monthly" view, and you can scroll to the bottom and scan through the "Thursday" reports to see what the observed high, low and rainfall values were, then use the "next month" link to move ahead through the fall months. If you see a Thursday that interests you, you can click the date and go to a more detailed hourly listing for that day. Finally, if you think there is another location that would be more representative for you than RDU, you can change weather stations as well.
Nov. 17, 2009 | Tags: cool sites, past weather

Answer: Climate records from the Raleigh-Durham airport do not show any snowfall in October, with the earliest trace of snow there reported on November 2nd, 1954, while the earliest measurable snow there was on November 6th, 1953, when .6" was recorded. A different station in Raleigh with a much longer period of record did record a trace of snow as early as October 24th, back in 1910.
Nov. 7, 2009 | Tags: past weather, records/extremes, snow

Answer: Records for those locations are posted at the Southeast Regional Climate Center Web site, available at www.sercc.com/climateinfo/historical/historical_nc.html. They show that for the Rocky Mount Experimental Station, with records stretching from 1914-2009, the highest reading was 106 degrees F on June 27, 1954 and the coldest was -8 degrees on January 21, 1985. The station at Scotland neck maintained records from 1872-1995. During that period, it was as hot as 105 on June 21, 1933 and as cold as -4 on February 1st, 1936.
Nov. 5, 2009 | Tags: cool sites, past weather, records/extremes

Answer: Climate data from the Raleigh-Durham airport seems to indicate your observations are right on target, especially for October. In September, the reported sunrise-to-sunset sky cover averaged 60%, very close to the "normal" value of 59%. However, while the normal number of cloudy days for the month, 11.4, matches the 11 that were observed, when you look at the number of "partly cloudy" days (16, versus a normal of 9.1) and "fair" days (3 compared to a normal of 9.5) you can see that cloud cover appeared to be more prevalent than average. In October, average sky cover was 70% compared to a normal of 49%, and there were 17 cloudy days (normal 11.1), 9 partly cloudy days (normal 7.1) and 5 fair days (well below the normal 12.8). Note that here "fair" indicates 2/10 or less of the sky obscured by opaque clouds, "cloudy" indicates 8/10 or more and "partly cloudy" covers the rest.
Nov. 3, 2009 | Tags: clouds, past weather

Answer: For the Raleigh-Durham airport, the earliest first occurrence of a freezing air temperature was October 3rd in 1974, while the latest first freeze was November 17, 1989. The average date for a first freeze is October 28th, with a standard deviation of +/- 9 days. Under the right conditions, frost can form on surface objects despite air temperatures that remain above freezing, and most reporting stations do not have reliable records of days with frost but not freezing temperatures, so all we can add regarding first frost dates is that they can potentially happen anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks before the first freeze.
Oct. 26, 2009 | Tags: cold, past weather, winter weather

Answer: It's pretty difficult to imagine any way in which the number of fogs in August would have any predictive value regarding snow events in the winter, apart from the fact that around here we typically have a few notable fogs in August and a few notable snows in winter, so over time the numbers could be similar. Also, one has to ask how dense the fog has to be to "count" as a "fog," (visibility under 3 miles, 1 mile, a half-mile?) and what counts in winter as a "snow" (a brief flurry, a trace of snow, measurable snow, an inch or more?). To answer your original question, though, fog was reported at the RDU airport on 24 days in August, with the visibility in fog falling below one quarter mile only twice. At Fayetteville, fog was reported on 28 days, with visibility below a quarter mile on three days.
Oct. 25, 2009 | Tags: folklore, past weather, visibility/fog/dust

Answer: There were clearly thunderstorms in the area on the afternoon and evening of 22 Sep 09, as documented by a series of METAR observations from the Raleigh-Durham airport (see www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KRDU/2009/9/22/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA for a listing). As far as specific lightning strike data goes, that information is not publicly available and must be requested in the form of a fee-based "lightning forensics" report from one of two private companies. See the following addresses for more information. You may want to request that the insurance company provide a report, or cover your cost to obtain such a report, from one or both of these sources that shows whether lightning was observed by their networks within 5-10 miles of your address. If it was, the combination of lightning data and the diagnoses from your telephone and air conditioning repair personnel would seem to make a strong case that lightning caused the damages in question. See www.uspln.com/forensics.html and www.vaisala.com/weather/products/lightning/dataarchivereports/strikenetfax (click the "FAQ" link at this address for more details).
Oct. 16, 2009 | Tags: cool sites, lightning, past weather, thunderstorms

Answer: The center of Hurricane Hugo sped into North Carolina the morning of September 22, 1989 after crossing the South Carolina coastline around Charleston the evening before. You can see details of its track by selecting it from the "Major NC Storms" box on our interactive hurricane tracker in the "hurricanes" section of our web site. The devastating tornado that reached F4 intensity, destroyed the northwest Raleigh K-Mart, and killed 2 people each in Wake and Nash counties, touched down around 1 am on November 28, 1988 in Umstead State Park and then followed an 84-mile path toward the northeast that ended near Jackson in Northampton County. As the dates illustrate, these two systems were not related. You can see much more about the Raleigh tornado in a National Weather Service event summary at www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/19881128/.
Oct. 13, 2009 | Tags: cool sites, hurricanes, past weather, tornadoes