Philly’s gray reign of gloom about to end as one of the driest Septembers gives way to October

Despite 10 consecutive, dispiritingly gloomy days in which the sun over Philly was barely a rumor, last month finished as one of the driest Septembers in 153 years of official recordkeeping, according to the National Weather Service.

But the region’s weather prospects have become considerably brighter with the dawn of October, and it appears that good fortune — at least the atmospheric version — will shine on the Phillies when they host the opening of the divisional round of the MLB playoffs this weekend.

Officially, only 0.77 inches of rain were measured at Philadelphia International Airport in September — the eighth-driest September on record — as the entire region now is classified as being either “abnormally dry” or in “moderate drought” by the interagency U.S. Drought Monitor.

Last month didn’t challenge the non-raining September champ — 1884, which weighed in with a mere 0.2 inches — but the 2024 figure was only 18% of normal.

Given the catastrophic winds and flooding rains from Helene in the South, the complaints may seem comparatively trivial, but, yes, it would be perfectly normal to come down with a nasty case of seasonal blues, said Norman Rosenthal, the psychiatrist crediting with minting the term seasonal affective disorder.

The timing of the cloud-fest happened to coincide with the ever-earlier sunsets and later sunrises. “With each passing day, we’re rapidly losing daylight,” said Ray Martin, a lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly. Philly loses more than two hours of daylight between Sept. 1 and Oct. 31.

In tandem with the clouds, that constitutes a “double whammy,” said Rosenthal, now a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University Medical Center who maintains a private practice in Maryland, which has shared Philadelphia’s gloom.

» READ MORE: Will the dryness speed up the foliage season?

The sun made cameos over parts of the region Monday and Tuesday, but of the 12 days logged as officially cloudy in Philly in September, nine occurred in the last 10 days of the month.

For all that gray, “We’ve just had these little spitty rains,” said Martin, “a lot of clouds and not a whole lot to show for it.”

Helene’s rains stayed well to the south, and rather than storms around here, the clouds have been manufactured predominantly by east and northeast winds ferrying moisture from the Atlantic, said Martin’s colleague Lee Robertson.

Dave Dombek, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., likened the weather to that experienced in the Pacific Northwest, where, he said, “It’ll be cloudy and damp. It looks like it’s going to rain at anytime.” It does rain, “but you tally it all up, and it doesn’t amount to a lot.”

The clouds aren’t doing much for rain deficits in Philly and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region, but they are dampening moods, said Rosenthal, including his own.

“It’s not just the length of the day, it’s the quality of light,” said Rosenthal.

“This time it hit me like I don’t think it’s ever hit me before,” he said. Rosenthal, formerly with the National Institutes of Health, identified seasonal affective disorder and its more-common variant, “winter blues,” after he experienced his first autumn in New York following a move from his native Johannesburg, South Africa.

Last week, he said, he decided to take a dose of his own medicine and spent the first hour of a morning in front of his light-therapy lamps.

“I felt my spirits were lifting,” he said.

The region should be getting some more natural light therapy later this week, with generous doses of sunlight starting Wednesday and continuing at least through the weekend.

And the timing of the dry spell isn’t all bad, said Dombek. With the sun’s power waning, moisture isn’t evaporating as quickly, plus the foliage has benefited from decent harvests of overnight dew.

With no significant rains in the forecast, right now it appears that the weather should be splendid for the opening of the postseason this weekend at Citizens Bank Park.