Twenty-eight degrees. That is the reading Rapid City Regional Airport hit before 7 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 16, ending a growing season that had run well past its usual close, KOTA reported. Downtown Rapid City dipped to 32 degrees the same morning. The first freeze landed more than two weeks after the airport’s average date, and the National Weather Service said gardens that were covered that night had about one more week left in them.
Seventeen days past the Sept. 29 airport average
The airport’s average first freeze falls on Sept. 29, based on records that go back to 1948, according to figures from the National Weather Service office in Rapid City cited by KOTA. This year’s arrived on Oct. 16, 17 days late. The latest first freeze on the airport’s books came on Oct. 27, 1963.
Dave Hintz, the meteorologist in charge at the Rapid City office, told the station the freeze came more than two weeks late at the airport. Downtown, where records only go back to 1996, the average first freeze is Oct. 10 and the latest on record is Oct. 31, so the city center was closer to its normal timing than the airport.
The daily weather record for the airport station kept by Iowa State University’s Iowa Environmental Mesonet lists a low of 27 degrees for Oct. 16, the first sub-freezing reading of the month. Every low from Oct. 1 through Oct. 15 stayed at 39 degrees or warmer, and the airport hit 93 degrees as recently as Oct. 9…