How many days till October?

I've never much liked heat. If I had to choose, I'd always take a cold winter day over a hot summer one. But fall is my favorite season. Or at least it was. October is, or was, my favorite month.

I used to steel myself against the summer heat by counting the days to October. Mid-August I'd tell myself: Only 45 days until October. Surely I could hang on for 45 days.

That strategy works less well with each passing year. This year it failed completely. A weeks-long brutal heatwave from August into September eventually broke. But after a brief respite the heat regrouped, and muscled its way into October. Today we have a plenty hot 90 degrees. Tomorrow's forecast, October 13, is 93. Not exactly crisp fall weather.

At least we were warned. When this "Super El Nino" began forming earlier in the year, we were told things could get especially hot. Next year is expected to be very hot also. New global average temperature records will be set, for at least one and maybe both years, to add to all the others. But lest we blame it all on a bad El Nino, understand that this year could portend the new normal in just 10 years, based on the global warming trajectory we're currently on. At least one climate scientist says so. And when the next Super El Nino comes along, its extra heat will be added to an even higher baseline than today's. Something to look forward to.

Regarding that warming trajectory, the folks over at the U.N. say the jig is up. The hopeful fantasy, long espoused, that humanity might act sufficiently to keep warming at not more than 1.5 C, is being abandoned. Not gonna happen. Staying at or below 1.5 C would have required a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, and humanity seems unwilling to do that, despite all the earnest promises. Atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to rise every year. We haven't even slowed it. CO2 fundamentally drives climate. It really is that simple.

Our future, for the near to mid term at least, is pretty well set. CO2 and temperature will continue to rise. Life will get more miserable. October will be increasingly unrecognizable, except to those too young to know what it was like to have frost on the lawn the morning after a Friday night high school football game. Everything will change.

Will change? The natural world is already changing dramatically. I wrote long ago about how armadillos, which are native to the deep south, are now common in Kansas. They weren't here when I was a kid (we used to have harsh winters) but they've been migrating north in a warming climate. They've already made it to Nebraska. Onward!

The other day I heard a public radio story about how roadrunners have made it to Kansas as well. The first sighting was actually in 1935, but now they're in 56 counties, and have nearly reached the Nebraska border.

The story explains that "The Greater Roadrunner’s traditional range spans the scrubby desert areas of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and northern Mexico." Scrubby desert. That sounds about right. Expect Kansas to get scrubbier and more desert-like as the climate warms. The "dry line" in Kansas is moving eastward, which will affect agriculture in the state that used to be called "the breadbasket of America." See also this and this.

Back to October. The longer range forecast has the remainder of the month looking more agreeable, starting in not too many days. At least I can hope. But hope for the years and decades ahead has been replaced by gloom.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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