Dryness is becoming a concern, but the tropical storm season is about to peak.
With blue skies accommodating the picturesque cumulus clouds, comfortable daytime temperatures, and very sleep-able nights, the weather around here has taken an uncharacteristically benign turn in the last two weeks.
Philly hasn't had a cloudy day since Aug. 22, and unless you're missing those flood alerts and steaming heat, this has been hard not to like.
How long can this tranquillity continue? Evidently, for at least several more days, but not necessarily forever.
In case you're wondering whatever happened to the 2025 hurricane season -- wait.
"The season is going to come alive very, very shortly," said Alex DaSilva, chief hurricane specialist with AccuWeather Inc.
The "meteorological fall" -- the Sept. 1-Nov. 30 period -- is underway.
But in the Philly region and elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, the atmosphere was about two weeks ahead of the meteorologists.
In Philly, temperatures since Aug. 18 have averaged about 4 degrees below normal, and August officially was the coolest in the city since 2014, according to the National Weather Service. It was the fifth-coolest in Atlantic City in more than 80 years of record keeping.
Despite a hot June, a blistering July, and an August heat wave, the summer finished with an average temperature of 77.4 degrees. That made it the not-so-hot 17th-warmest summer in Philly records dating to the 1870s.
Not coincidentally, Philly's cool spell coincided with extreme heat in the West that saw triple-digit readings on Aug. 22 and 23 in Portland, Oregon.
Often, when it's chilly in the East, the upper-air patterns are such that Westerners are baking.
"It's very hard to keep it warm everywhere, and cool everywhere," said DaSilva.
About the only blemish on the recent run of weather has been the spreading dryness, which has been evident throughout the Northeast, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center.
The 1.73 inches of rain measured at Philadelphia International Airport in August was 2.56 inches shy of normal.
It was Washington, D.C.'s driest August on record, with just 0.2 inches of rain. Boston experienced its fourth-driest, and Wilmington, the 12th driest. Ports of South Jersey now are in the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor's "abnormally dry" zones.
But this time of year, wild cards are often in play in the form of "tropical remnants," said Alex Staarmann, meteorologist with the weather service.
The region experienced disruptive effects from a total of six tropical storms or their remnants in 2020 and 2021, including those of devastating Ida, but no significant tropical rainmakers since. Hurricane Erin last month generated tidal flooding at the Shore in tandem with the new moon, but no substantial rain.
Since Erin spun into obscurity, the tropics have been quiet.
But DaSilva says the rainfall deficits eventually could end in a hurry, for better or worse.
The atmosphere has also been dry out in the Atlantic hurricane zone, said Philip Klotzbach, hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. In effect, the dryness has put a cap on development. "We've generally had a more stable atmosphere than normal," he said.
A tropical storm is expected to form later this week from a disturbance that had formed off the African coast, but it appears that like Erin, it will curve away from the U.S. East Coast.
To date, six named storms, those with winds of at least 39 mph, have formed in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, with Erin the lone hurricane. On average, two hurricanes have formed by now.
But the hurricane season is approaching its climatological peak, which is Sept. 10.
"We're going to have to watch the Gulf," said DaSilva. The waters there are dangerously warm.
"It's like a tinder box," he said. The warm waters have not been disturbed, and thus not cooled, by passing storms.
"The waters are basically untouched. If we get anything in the Gulf later this month, even into October, it's probably going to be a major hurricane."
A storm approaching the Philly region from the Gulf could be a prodigious rainmaker, he said.
The forecasts call for the run of sunny days to continue. Showers are possible Thursday night, and again Saturday night, but widespread heavy rain isn't expected.
Temperatures during the workweek are expected to warm to the mid-80s, but then cool-off considerably starting Sunday, getting no higher than the mid-70s.
For the record, that would be about normal for the first day of the astronomical fall, which arrives at 2:41 p.m. Philly time on Sept. 22.