Winter may officially begin Dec. 21, but why does it seem that we always get our first blast of cold weather on Oct. 31? Maybe those cold Halloween nights stick out in our memories.I remember one Halloween night I spent desperately trying to convince my mother that Indian squaws don’t wear stocking caps, but I ended up covering my slick black braids with one anyway. And many of us have worn sweat pants under the ballerina tutu. I once saw a darling little angel whose mother had taken the time to attach her wings and halo to the outside of her hooded parka.Are Colorado Halloween nights actually colder? How often, really, do little ghouls and goblins hold out their bags with mittened hands and murmur “trick or treat” through chattering teeth?According to the National Weather Service Forecast Office (www.crh.noaa.gov), cold Halloweens are less common than warm ones. Since 1948, in the Colorado Springs area, the average high for Halloween was 57 degrees and the average low was 28 degrees, with a mean temperature of 42. Not exactly tropical, but warm enough that any Goosebumps experienced by trick-or-treaters are generated by fright, not weather. There have been some cold Halloweens, though. In 1991, the temperature dropped to a record low of 10 degrees. That’s cold enough to freeze the fanny off your Frankenstein. In 1972, a record snowfall was recorded – almost 14 inches. The most recent Halloween cold spell came in 2002, according the NWS. A morning temperature was 20 degrees, rising only another four throughout the day, with an evening of snow and drizzle.So, should you dress your little one as a hula dancer or an Eskimo; a surfboarder or a snowboarder?The Old Farmer’s Almanac, where people dare to forecast the weather a year ahead of time, predicts that Oct. 31 will be ‘near normal temperatures,’ with the average temperature for the day about 48 degrees in our region (www.almanac.com). The NWS, also on a positive note, reports that the “climatological chance of an inch or more” of snow falling on that day is only 9 percent.So maybe you don’t have to buy the Spiderman costume a size bigger to accommodate long thermal underwear. And perhaps you can leave the stocking caps and mittens in the closet. But after all, it is Colorado, where the weather is as fleeting as a ghost sighting. Be prepared! And be safe!
