John Wheeler: Fall is darker for 2 reasons

FARGO — As the autumn season deepens, our days grow steadily darker. Day length is made shorter — and nights longer — by the shifting of Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the sun. But the weather also gets cloudier in the fall. Weather systems become larger in scale with broader areas of rising air motion, which leads to much longer periods of overcast.

The clouds themselves, transition from the smaller scaled cumulus variety which usually take up only a portion of the sky to the flatter, stratus variety which can easily cover the entire sky. Day after day of cloudy skies are somewhat rare in July and August but become more commonplace in October. Rainfall actually decreases in the cooler season because the cooler air has less water vapor in it, even though the relative humidity is often higher.

John Wheeler is Chief Meteorologist for WDAY, a position he has had since May of 1985. Wheeler grew up in the South, in Louisiana and Alabama, and cites his family’s move to the Midwest as important to developing his fascination with weather and climate. Wheeler lived in Wisconsin and Iowa as a teenager. He attended Iowa State University and achieved a B.S. degree in Meteorology in 1984. Wheeler worked about a year at WOI-TV in central Iowa before moving to Fargo and WDAY..