Here's why it feels like we skipped fall

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2018 will likely go down as the year with only two seasons: winter and summer. While that is not reality, there is some truth to it.

The classic spring and fall-like temperatures are the cool to chilly mornings and fairly mild afternoons. While the definition of all of these adjectives varies from person to person, most folks consider them to be when temperatures in the morning are in the upper 30s through the 40s and highs in the afternoons are in the 60s to the low 70s or so. Well, both times of the year where we typically have those qualifications were hijacked by much cooler temperatures.

I'm sure you remember the winter that would never end back in April when we had a record breaking amount of snow and therefore a very cool start to May. Then, we quickly transitioned into above normal conditions for the second half of May and then June. That means temperatures went quickly from the 40s and 50s to the 80s and 90s. A similar scenario happened over the last several weeks with a warm and wet start to September followed by very cool and cloudy conditions as temperatures went quickly from the 70s and 80s to the 40s and 50s.

In fact, we have only experienced 19 days in 2018 with high temperatures in the 60s. That’s less than half of what we experienced just last year and what we see in a “typical” year. You have to go back to the wild swings of 2013 to find anything similar. You have to go back even further, the 90s, to find fewer 60 degree days in the Twin Cities.

The real crazy part, though, is that the Twin Cities finished the longest stretch on record with high temps at or above 70 degrees just this past August at 107. Talk about a tale of two seasons.