Jerry Dilsaver

The cooler weather of the past week has been a really nice preview of fall. The mornings have been especially nice with temperatures in the 60s and lower humidity. Except

This is our last summer Scales and Tales for 2024. Summer ends and fall begins on Sept. 22 at 8:44 a.m. EDT, so next week’s page will be the first

Fall began Sunday morning, but its arrival was more like limping in than coming with a bunch of fanfare. It was a beautiful day – but! Unfortunately, many of us were still dealing with fallout from earlier in the week.

By Capt. Jerry Dilsaver, Special to The Pilot Updated What's with the weather? Doesn't Mother Nature know what week this is?

Before we can talk about the influx of large king mackerel that arrived during the past week, we have to devote a little time to talking about the tropics, which continue to spit out storms after a late summer lull.

It's easier, but not easy, to look at the National Hurricane Center map this week. Hurricane Milton has passed and dissipated. The only tropical system left in the Atlantic is a weak area of scattered thunderstorms roughly halfway between the Cabo Verde Islands and the Leeward Islands. This system is currently in an area where further strengthening isn't expected, but there is a caveat in the forecast that if it stays active through the end of the week, it's probability of strengthening could increase to around 50% as it reaches the Leeward Islands. The models vary after that and we'll have to wait and see.

As we move farther into October, we're seeing some indecision in the tropics with systems forming into storms, but moving off into the open ocean or dissipating pretty quickly. This is a good thing.

We ease into November this Friday with fishing and fishing tournaments going strong. The water temps are hovering around 70 degrees, which is where many fish feed the most aggressively.

Well folks, it's November now. We're more than a month into fall and still seeing daytime temperatures in the 80s. While I spoke with several folks who consider that as not good (they wouldn't say it was bad), I'm going to consider it good. The 10-day forecast shows the temps slipping into the 70s for a while, but only have the nighttime lows dipping into the upper 50s. There is a chance of some much-needed rain Wednesday through Friday, but none of those days is forecast to be a rainout. Even the winds continue to be light, so I'm thinking this is more of the great fall weather we've been waiting for.

We've made it to the middle of November and the weather remains basically good. There have been a few days that were really warm and a few cooler days. However, the water temperature has managed to hover around 70 to just below and the fishing is good. The air temperature cooled a bit over the weekend and is forecast to stay with us for a while. The cooler air temps have cooled the water just a little too. Most of the reporting station on the Coastal Ocean Research and Monitoring Program (www.cormp.org) are still reporting water temps of 68 and 68, but a few have reported cooler water.