’Tis the noon of autumn’s glow,

When a soft and purple mist,

Like a vaporous amethyst,

Or an air-dissolved star,

Mingling light and fragrance, far

From the curved horizon’s bound

To the point of heaven’s profound,

Fills the overflowing sky. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Moon in October

The Moon is full Oct. 7

The Moon enters its final quarter Oct. 14 

The Moon is new Oct. 22

The Moon enters its second quarter Oct. 29

The Morning and  Evening Stars of October

Venus in Virgo and Mars in Libra are the morning stars. They remain in the daytime sky until evening when they can be seen as the evening stars. Jupiter in Gemini follows Orion across the sky, appearing in the east before dawn.

Meteors in October

The Orionid Meteor Shower will occur in and around Orion in the early morning of Oct. 20-21.

The Weather in the Week Ahead

Light frost strikes 10 to 20 percent of all the nights this week, with Oct. 3 most likely to bring a damaging freeze in the 20s (a 5 percent chance of that). Highs in the 80s occur approximately 10 percent of the days, and 70s can be expected 30 percent of the time. Moderate 60s dominate 50 percent of the afternoons, while colder 40s and 50s come 15 to 20 percent of the time.

The October Outlook

The average number of major cold waves increases to seven this month in the Lower Midwest. There are typically only four to five in September, just three or four in August. These fronts bring an occasional day when the thermometer reads only in the 30s; three or four days stay in the 40s; at least a week of afternoons are in the 50s, another seven in the 60s, another seven in the 70s, and two to four in the 80s. Normal highs drop 14 to 15 degrees, slipping from the lower 70s into the upper 50s. Average lows move from about 50 all the way down to the upper 30s.

The warmest October days, those with at least a 30 percent chance of highs above 70 degrees, are the 1st (typically the warmest day in October), 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 15th, 16th and 31st. The coldest days, those with at least a 50 percent chance of highs below 60 degrees, are the 20th, 22nd, 25th, 27th, 28th and 29th.

Frost occurs at least twice in a southern Ohio in October; and it usually strikes six nights in the next 30 (and it occurs one night out of every two in the coldest years). The early mornings on which frost is most likely to occur are those of the 13th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 29th.

October is the peak of the dry season in the Lower Midwest. Less precipitation falls at this time of year than at any other, and the skies offer more sun than clouds. There are typically 11 completely clear days in October, eight partly cloudy, and 12 mostly cloudy or fully overcast.

The driest October days, those with only a 15 percent chance of rain, are the 26th, 28th and 29th. The sunniest October days, those with at least a 75 percent chance of sun, are the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 28th and 29th. October’s sunniest day of all is the 15th.

The rainiest October days, those with at least a 35 percent chance of precipitation, are the 1st, 4th, 10th, 12th (the wettest day of the month), 13th, 16th, 17th, 22nd and 23rd. Light snow falls between the 12th and the 31st two years in 10.

Approximate Sequence of Leaf Turn and Leaf Drop in Early, Middle and Late Autumn:

Aug. 10: Black walnut trees have started to shed, and black walnuts begin to fall in large numbers. Leaves often begin to yellow on cottonwoods, locusts, box elders, spicebush and crabapples.

Aug. 20: Orange patches have appeared on a few Judas maples. Many locusts are brown from leaf miners. Buckeyes can be half yellow. The earliest ash trees blush.

Aug. 30: Some catalpa and black walnut trees have lost most of their leaves.

Sept. 5: Cottonwoods fade more dramatically as goldenrod and the soybean fields turn gold.

Sept. 10: Silver olive foliage has streaks of ocher.

Sept. 20: Ashes start their autumn transformation, some becoming maroon, others gold. (After the die-off of the early 21st century, ash-turn is no longer a marker for autumn in many locations.)

Sept. 25: Black walnut trees are completely bare. Crab apples and hackberries are thinning. Color spreads across the red maples. Blush appears on the sweet gums. Box elders are shedding.

Oct. 1: Enough leaves have fallen from the canopy to reveal the deep red of the Virginia creeper on branches and fences. Amber hickories blend with the ashes. White birch leaves show gilded edges.

Oct. 5: Orange maples, yellow sumacs, hickories, redbuds and red oaks have now joined the ashes and cottonwoods to give a full sense of autumn to the landscape. The burning bush is deep scarlet. Beeches are flushed for their November change. The late fields of goldenrod, the dry corn, and the rusting soybeans complete the fall scenario.

Oct. 10: Peak leafturn is starting to occur in woodlots where maples, ashes, buckeyes, wild cherry and locusts predominate. Most Osage are yellow now, a few ginkgoes starting. Cottonwoods and the rest of the box elders lose their leaves, and more holes open in the tree line. Fencerows are shedding their Virginia creeper. Grape vines hold on yellow-green.

Oct. 15: Witch hazel, the last of the flowering shrubs, opens. Rains often take down the ashes and redbuds by this date, ending Early Fall. Full Middle Fall begins, bringing in the remaining maples for approximately a week.

Oct. 20: White oaks are crimson, and the end of soybean harvest and the browning of goldenrod finally subdue the glowing September fields.

Oct. 25: Silver maples are champagne gold, and the sugar and red maples are down or are shedding quickly. Tulip trees are almost gone. Some ginkgoes are green, others fully gold and losing foliage. Light frosts accelerate the passage of Middle Fall.

Oct. 30: Osage, sweet gum, ginkgo, and white mulberry continue to keep their leaves. Beeches are half turned. Maples collapse in storms. Some sycamores are totally undone; others are only thinning as the mottled land enters Late Fall.

Nov. 5: The pear trees are red brown. Sweet gums are coming down. Ginkgoes and white mulberries reach their brightest, and then disintegrate.

Nov. 10: Rose of Sharon shrubs are half bare. Honeysuckles weaken, berries becoming more prominent. Across the countryside, the woodlot canopies are dark and empty.

Autumncount

Between the first threat of frost and the first breath of winter, approximately 18 major weather systems cross the United States. Four of those systems arrived in September; October brings at least seven more.

Oct. 2: This front is typically a strong and consistent one, and it usually brings freezing nights to the North. The two mornings following this front often bring a damaging freeze along the Canadian border.

Oct. 4: A secondary front often comes through around the 4th of October, signaling further progress in the advent of autumn. Planting, harvest and hiking are favored for a day or two after the passage of this system.

Oct. 7: This front, the final one of the subseason of “Early Fall,” is often weaker than the weather systems of Oct. 2nd and 4th, but frost is still to be expected in the Northeast, upper Midwest, the Plains and the Rockies. The weather following this front is typically dry and stable, but the advance of the Oct. 13th high increases the chances of precipitation on the 10th through the 12th. Snow is not uncommon at higher elevations on those dates, and the 12th brings the first chance of flurries to the Ohio Valley. In 2015, this front pushed Hurricane Joaquin to the northeast, sparing the northern coast from wind, but drenching South Carolina with once-in-a-millennium rainfall.

Oct. 13: This cold front almost always accompanies a chillier and more dramatic subseason of autumn known as “Middle Fall.” This high-pressure system can be expected to bring rain or snow and nights in the upper 20s in the North, upper 30s in the South.

From “A Native Hill” by Wendell Berry

A friend of mine got me started, sending me the quotation above. And I sit on the back porch this evening, watching birds, images and feelings moving across me in waves. I am the “voyager standing still.”

The day before, a neighbor had told me about a poem in which a meditator sits with Jesus until his ego disappears and only Jesus is left. Wrapped in sensation, I become the hill. I become the Jesus of the poem, losing myself in the autumnal measures of time:

All day long, the peak of maple color spread across the town and countryside. South of the village, great flocks of blackbirds in the cut-over soybean fields. I would actually like to sit with Jesus (Jeanie?), but she’s gone, leaving me behind with my stream of consciousness. Sweet and painful memories, suppressed,  shelved, superimposed on sensations of autumn passage. At my feeders. sparrows alternate with black-capped chickadees, with aromas of plants and fruits I can’t name or recall, layers of other autumns, the flickering of years that have no names.

In the garden in front of me, three small, orange Mexican sunflowers stand bright against the neighbor’s dark woods. Two pink canna lilies remain from the summer. Earlier in the day, I had seen that almost all the leaves of TK’s maple tree were down, that the Danielsons’ maple had turned overnight, that Lil’s tree, the latest maple on my High Street block, was suddenly ochre. It seems that keeping track of one tree or another over the years keeps the collapse of summer more manageable. It is enough that these particular trees come down, parts for the whole, short-circuiting the awareness that everything is falling apart; only these trees are dissolving.

I write down what I see over and over again, unable to catch the anniversaries that seem to land on me and crawl across my body, gathering up the spent seasons, cementing and then letting go of the mottled shrubs to my right that are matted with yellowing hops and false buckwheat and knotweed. In all my notes: the frustrating absence of enough or the right words that would allow meaning to emerge, the absence of sharing that would allow my true  emotions to reveal themselves.

My ego pursues meaning, existential explanations about role and persona and value: these, too, are late flowers brought in from the coming cold, seeds saved and set aside in old envelopes, leaves salvaged to press. Now the sunset though the backyard trees matches the dusky, sweet-peach breasts of my October chickadees, measures the time against Berry’s hill, and at dusk I prove to myself once again that I exist, and that I look for God, wondering if the geese fly will over again in the early dark like they did yesterday, so many things still unnamed, unworded for winter.