A 14-day dry spell in Western Pennsylvania is expected to end Monday night when a cold front moves through the region.

The front will bring an end to warmer weather and make it feel more like autumn, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Pat Herald.

“Obviously, it’s dry,” Herald said.

But it isn’t that unusual, he said. “All our averages are made up of periods like this. You get wet periods and you get dry periods. It’s just weather.”

As of Monday morning, the September precipitation total was .64 inch, about 2 inches below the normal September precipitation total of 2.84 inches, according to the NWS.

It hasn’t rained since Sept. 13, when the NWS recorded .06 inch of rain at its offices in Moon, and prior to that there was another five-day stretch without precipitation, Herald said.

“For the year, we’re still very close to normal,” he said.

The driest September on record was in 1985, when .28 inch was recorded for the month, according to the NWS. That total was still more than four times the driest month on record for the region, October 1874, when .06 inch was reported.

Proving Herald’s point about the way the totals average out, 1985 was also the year the wettest month on record was recorded, November, when 11.05 inches was recorded by the NWS.

Last year, the pattern was different with 5.34 inches of precipitation, nearly twice the normal amount for September.

The numbers have fluctuated throughout the last decade, with the wettest September recorded in 2018 when 8.5 inches was recorded and the driest was the previous year, 2017, with .58 inch. It was also dry in 2014, with .97 inch recorded, according to the NWS.

Expect less than an inch of rain from the front between Monday night and Tuesday, Herald said.

It will be cooler, with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s and 50s the rest of the week, he said.

“This is early fall,” Herald said.

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