Snowtober

Winter arrived so early this year, the traditional black and orange colors of Halloween are more orange and white as snow rests atop front porch jack-o-lanterns.

"Of 2020, this is the second-longest cold wave of the whole year. We didn't go above freezing today," Press Climatologist Cliff Harris said Monday. "In 1935 between the 29th and 31st, we had 52 hours below freezing, straight hours. Right now, we’re at 75 hours and counting. We’ve busted that record."

This cold spell is on track to break even more records, he said.

"This will be the longest uninterrupted subfreezing period ever recorded in the month of October by Halloween," Harris said. "When we were 14 degrees Sunday morning, we had a 10 to 12 mile an hour wind. It gave us a windchill factor of 3 below zero. We’ve never had a windchill below zero in October.

"This has been actual winter," he continued. "I call it the earliest start to winter ever."

North Idaho beat last year's October snowfall in one day, he said, with 7.7 inches on Friday and two-tenths an inch overnight. The previous record for that day was 3.8 inches in 1957.

"We’ve wiped everything out," Harris said. "This is actual winter."

Harris suspects next year will follow suit.

"I think there’s a good change of snow next October," he said. "This was unprecedented, and to have two years in a row like this is really unprecedented."

It's going to be cold again today, in the upper 30s, with a little warmup in the next week.

But not for long — Harris foresees a cold air trough making an appearance around Veterans Day, a chance for flurries to the north and showers Wednesday with snow around 3,000 feet.

"We’re in a pattern of unbelievable extremes," he said.