It’s not exactly weird, but disappointing: when I went to bed, the forecast overnight low was 41F. When I woke up it was actually 35F. So it’ll be interesting to see what all has been ruined by the unexpected.
Oh, that is disappointing!
Our weather has been surprisingly cool and rainy this August and September (so far). We’re actually getting an autumn, instead of a six-month brutal summer that suddenly turns into chilly temperatures that bring frost overnight. That is very weird weather for us – and it’s nice!
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First time quoting myself 
This time I’m going to delete a couple of comments to keep this a non-triggering place to talk about landrace gardening and actually adapting to challenging and weird weather. Thanks for respecting.
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You see how Lake Superior looks like a finger pointing at a maroon blob? I’m about half a mile north of the NE corner of that blob, so only D3 for me so far. My garden is small enough to run the sprinkler when I need to (the aquifer seems fine), and the orchard seems to be doing OK. But also, we’ve had several big rains so it sort of feels like it’s not as bad as the map suggests, even though I don’t doubt the data.
It’s important to remember that these are comparisons to a local historical average. So if your area usually gets 10 inches of rain per month, and this month it only got 5, that puts you under drought conditions, technically, although few people would consider it a drought.
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We are technically in a white area of the map in Indiana, but you wouldn’t know it looking around. We’re in a similar boat. Annuals we planted this year are starting to really show stress and die off. Even the young persimmons (native to the area and planted as transplants last year) are showing obvious stress. The tougher, more creative, and/or better suited plants are hanging on.
I’m also not doing much about it. The favas I planted around August 10th before the heat wave got some water today. They had to endure enough as it was. It’s really interesting to see how different plants are trying to figure things out. It’s also been interesting to see powdery mildew sweep through the squash with things being so dry - - I take it to mean they already had it, they just weren’t showing symptoms until the drought stress hit. If I remember right I saw this last year as well (edit: this week I learned from this forum that hot and dry are the conditions powdery mildew likes.)
We are significantly below our average rainfall for the past month. It’s been useful to see what was able to get started without intervention during this dry spell by only dry broadcasting before a light rain and then cooking along with the neighboring ground cover. Rye, radish, vetch, lettuce, and soybean (destined to be cover) have managed for me, while peas sown at the same time appear to have said no way. Just a few lettuce or soybean plants - - the lettuce seedlings may or may not have crossed with wild.
I guess the point is about the weather - - it’s been really dry. Trying to take it as an opportunity. I plan to let the plants largely continue to figure it out and to do some planting soon, without apparent rain in the next days. If anything wants to go ahead and come up ahead of the next rain, the way I see it, it either really wants to be there and/or something else really wants it there.
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And there might not have been average weather to remind you what average is like. Like if you have few summers just little over average rainfall ( say 130%), half of average is going to feel little more drastic than it is. And every 10% less is going to affect more than the previuos 10%. I have noticed in recent years how people here have complained about cold summers when it’s been close to average or just over, just because it’s been so hot in previous years. I suppose tecnically those have been cold, but not in our standards.
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I can’t complain much about our weather this year in southern Missouri. Every year brings varying challenges but this year was a big improvement over last year when we had a flash drought and the second hottest July on record. This year we were drier than normal from April through June, but nothing too bad, and it actually made spring planting and weed control easier than normal. July and August had above normal rain, especailly August, and we’ve had pretty normal rains so far in Septmber. Quite often, I had more rain than all the major weather reporting stations in the region. Most years that isn’t the case here. I did have an unusual number of summer windstorms which did a little damage especially knocking over some of the corn, but much of the corn still produced decently even if is was more annoying to get in and harvest.
I’m in the small area of white (no abnormal dryness) in south central Missouri on the map that Mark Reed posted a few days ago.