Unseasonably cool weather has caused “fake fall” to trend on social media again. But what's the science behind it? Is fake fall a real thing?
Ade Adeniji
August 23, 2024 12:35 PM PDT Published | August 23, 2024 4:57 PM PDT Updated
As fall weather forecasts predict a delayed arrival of cooler autumn weather, people across the Northeast are sharing their feelings about the lingering summer.
Earlier this week, many people woke up to chilly mornings in the Midwest and Northeast as temperatures felt more like fall than late summer. In the coolest locations on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, some areas were up to 20 degrees below average for this time of year.
State College, Pennsylvania, where AccuWeather's global headquarters is located, recorded a record low of 49 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, the coldest August temperature recorded since 2000. Starbucks is also getting in on the fall fever, returning its famous Pumpkin Spice Latte to U.S. menus two days earlier than 2023.
Thanks to the unseasonably cool weather, “False Fall” has once again been trending on social media. According to NYBucketList's Instagram, Gotham residents are now catching up on “False Fall” after watching “Hell's Front Door” earlier in the summer, with “Second Summer” expected to follow in September and October.
False Fall isn't just a northern state phenomenon. It's a nationwide phenomenon. Alabama comedian Matt Mitchell has been going viral for his videos in which he plays different characters as False Fall.
“It's just like a normal fall, but only lasts as long as there's a smile on (longtime Alabama football coach) Nick Saban's face,” he said in the video.
But what's the science behind it, really? Do fake falls actually happen?
AccuWeather meteorologist and digital producer Jesse Ferrell noted there is no strict definition for false fall. Ferrell said false fall occurs when an abnormally warm period with higher than normal average temperatures is followed by a cooler period. The conditions then reverse, leading to what's known as a “second summer.”
“In places with seasonal changes, there may be several outbreaks between August and November,” Ferrell explained.
The important thing to note here is that on a larger scale, temperatures gradually decrease as we move from summer to fall.
“At any given time, a graph of temperature averages over hundreds of years shows a slow and steady decline from hot summer temperatures to cooler autumn days,” he said.
This is why, come September, parents are putting jackets on their kids and sending them to school, and why summer camps, at least in cold states, can't continue in perpetuity.
Pumpkin fields waiting to be harvested herald the arrival of fall in Santa Ynez, California on September 16, 2015. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)
But the averages are far from pretty: Ferrell said temperatures can fluctuate over the course of days or even weeks as we transition into fall, with cold fronts sweeping through the city and bringing cooler weather before peaking again.
AccuWeather meteorologists said recent cold weather in the Northeast and Midwest will give way to a warming trend over the weekend, potentially bringing summer heat to parts of the Northeast next week.
Fall is now well underway on the West Coast, with cities like Redding, California, which have been experiencing sweltering temperatures of over 90 and even 100 degrees since early June, expected to drop into the 70s by Saturday.
Temperatures from September 1 to October 6, 2023, will see a cooler period known as “false autumn” in the middle of two hot spells.
In a further example of what happens as the seasons change, Philadelphia approached record high temperatures in early September last year. By the middle of the month, the city had experienced two weeks of average or below average temperatures, just in time for the first day of fall on September 23. But then Second Summer hit False Falls, and sweltering Philadelphia was Rocky-like back in the ring.
“Residents bought pumpkin spice lattes and put up their Halloween decorations only to be disappointed one week when temperatures rose into the 80s, but the trend reversed and the following week temperatures were much warmer,” Farrell said.
That’s the whole point about false fall: the seasons always change, and fall, and then winter, always comes.
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