Wisconsin Weather Tracks Exactly To Historical Averages; Forecaster Calls Pattern 'Disappointingly Predictable'

WAUKESHA — Daily highs this month have run between 65 and 75 degrees. Nightly lows have held between 48 and 60. Rainfall through Monday sat at 69 millimeters, 2.7 inches, spread across 12 days. Every one of those figures lands within a degree, or a few hundredths of an inch, of the 50-year average for Waukesha County in September, and Richard Kowalski, the meteorologist who compiled the comparison, is not pleased about it.

"There's nothing here," Kowalski said, sliding a printed chart across a table at the National Weather Service field office where he keeps a side archive of local climate data. "No polar vortex, no derecho, no 90-degree stretch in the back half of the month. It's the most forgettable September I've charted since I started doing this in 2011. Zero narrative urgency."

The Numbers, For Anyone Keeping Score

Kowalski's chart, which he has been updating nightly and posting to a private group of eleven other weather hobbyists, shows the 2026 September mean high at 70.1 degrees against a 50-year average of 69.8. The mean low is 53.4 against a historical 53.1. Precipitation is running half a millimeter above normal, a gap Kowalski described as "inside the rounding error of the rain gauge itself." He has cross-checked the numbers against two independent stations, one at Crazy Water Lawn and Garden's rooftop sensor and one from a retired Waukesha South science teacher who has logged daily readings from his Sunset Drive backyard since 1996, and both confirm the same flat, uneventful line.

"I keep waiting for the anomaly," Kowalski said. "A cold snap, a dry stretch, anything I could put a headline on. Instead I've got a bell curve doing exactly what a bell curve is supposed to do."

What This Means For The Rest Of Us

As a former DPW supervisor, I understand this complaint better than most people will admit to. A textbook September is, professionally speaking, wonderful news: no emergency storm drain calls, no washed-out shoulders on County O, no overtime authorized for anything more dramatic than raking. I spent eleven years as a supervisor hoping for exactly the month Kowalski is now describing as a personal disappointment. I don't say that to dismiss him. I say it because I've noticed the same restlessness creeping into how people around here talk about ordinary things once there's nothing wrong to talk about instead.

"Perfectly normal weather might actually be the unusual thing now. Nobody trusts a month that doesn't do anything."

— Richard Kowalski, meteorologist

Kowalski's theory, which he floated somewhat sheepishly, is that a genuinely average month has become the outlier by modern standards, simply because it gives people nothing to post about. He pointed to the volume of Nextdoor threads from earlier this summer speculating about record heat, unusual humidity, and one now-deleted post insisting the county had quietly changed its rain gauge calibration to hide a drought. None of that, he noted, was supported by his data either. "People want the chart to be dramatic," he said. "The chart is just not going to cooperate this month."

A Quiet Month, Duly Noted

Ned England, who tracks air quality from the Frame Park pedestrian bridge by counting visible lampposts, told me he'd counted all nine on three separate mornings this week, which by his own methodology qualifies as "suspiciously fine." He wasn't being sarcastic. Councilman Gary Puchalski, asked for comment, said the city "doesn't really have a September weather policy" and seemed confused about why anyone would call to ask for one.

I don't have a call to action here, which itself feels appropriate to the subject. Kowalski plans to keep updating his chart through the end of the month, mostly out of habit, and says he'll flag it if anything moves more than two degrees off the historical line. As of Tuesday, nothing had. Enjoy the weather. There will not be a follow-up column unless something goes wrong.