It’s only appropriate that summer’s last day brings Indianapolis’s 100th 80°+ day of the year! The mercury at the Indianapolis International Airport reached 83° today and we’ll have a few more days with similar temperatures this weekend as fall starts.

The Fall season officially starts at 2:50 a.m. Saturday when the Fall Equinox occurs. Saturday will have a sunrise at 7:33 a.m. and a sunset at 7:45 p.m. However, the summer-like weather continues for the first day of Fall as Saturday calls for mostly sunny skies and highs in the lower 80s around here. The same can be said for Sunday with a forecast high of 81°.

Even after the warm weekend, our temperatures will slowly begin to go down each day but not by big means at all. In addition, very little if any rain chances also exist into next week thanks to several factors.

The first thing is Tropical Storm Ophelia, which is scheduled to make landfall Saturday morning as a strong Tropical Storm. Damaging winds up to 85 miles per hour, storm surge of 4-6 feet and flooding are likely for several spots along the east coast. Ophelia has a lot of moisture around it and thanks to the set-up around the storm, that moisture will have an extremely tough time reaching Indiana.

An area of high pressure northeast near Maine and Quebec is setting up as we speak and will likely not move into next week. In addition, there will be an area of low pressure set up in the south. This “high over low” pattern is what’s known as a “Rex Block” pattern. With Indiana being in the middle of this, the jet stream will buckle and aid in keeping storm systems and moisture away from us.

That’s why next week’s rain chances remain slim and widely scattered at best. It’s also why our temperatures won’t be dropping off by much. Our dry spell will also continue during one of the driest Septembers on record. Indy has only seen 0.17″ of rain. This pattern will likely continue as October approaches, too.