If you love fall, you’ll adore this weekend.
After a little rain on Friday, the skies clear, the temperatures drop and it’s fall again. Look for a temperature when you wake up Saturday in the upper 30s, look for daytime highs both days in the 60s, look for lots of sunshine. And look for something that’s starting to reappear after a long hiatus: programs at North Carolina State Parks.
For the first time in a while, there’s a chance of rain in the weekend forecast. But how much and where exactly is hard to tell — harder to tell than usual, because the source of the rain is a fickle hurricane. Or the remnants of a fickle hurricane.
This morning I went out for an early hike. The air was crisp and clear, not a cloud in the sky. The trees were just beginning to show color. And it was brisk: I could have used a long-sleeve shirt.
After a moment of blissful basking, I remembered a map I’d seen the day before showing the extent of the smoke from the western wildfires that so far have burned more than 3.7 million acres. The haze from the fires extended from coast-to-coast, blanketing most of the West and following the jet stream into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Much of the country is affected by these fires (there are 26 major wildfires burning in California alone). Fortunately, we are not.
On Thursday, we wrote of our forgotten trails, the trails that we once hiked regularly, the trails we dreamt of hiking when hiking was in our dreams. And then, for some reason, we stopped hiking them. Can’t really remember why, either.
Don’t you love it when it rains during the week and the sun comes out for the weekend? The remnants of Sally leave the state Friday afternoon, clearing the way for cool temperatures — highs only in the mid-60s, overnight lows in the upper 40s — and sunny skies. It’s a weekend when you’ll definitely want to be outside. Trouble is, so will everyone else.