Feeling Like Fall

It certainly felt like autumn in the Princeton area yesterday morning.

TigerBlog looked at his phone and saw it was 55 degrees when he woke up. Hey, this is still August. It's not supposed to be 54 degrees.

It was also really windy. TB wondered if the wind chill could actually kick in if it's still August. 

If you're looking at records, it's supposed to be a high of 82, or at least that's the average temperature. The low is supposed to be 63. 

The all-time low for Princeton on Aug. 26 was 54 degrees, back in 1944. The average high was 99, four years later, in 1948.

So yeah, it wasn't quite a record low. It was though, very close, and it seemed to be very chilly.

The best weather of the year in this area is typically in September. That's when it's warm but not hot, the humidity is low, it's not particularly rainy and the nights are cool enough that you can turn off the AC and sleep with the windows open.

The worst weather, you'd think, would be January or so, but it's really April, or at least has been the last few years. That's when it's supposed to be warming up and classically springtime, but it seems like it's 45 degrees and raining every day.

As TB walked into the building yesterday, he saw the football team as it practiced on Finney and Campbell Fields. If you're a football player, you have to appreciate an August day like yesterday.

The forecast for the rest of the week takes the temps back into the 80s, but it'll be the low 80s. Are the really hot days in the past for 2019?

Also, would you rather play a fall sport, where the weather for preseason is better but it gets chillier as it goes along, or a spring sport, where it's freezing for the preseason but warms up (presumably) as the season moves along?

This is game week for Princeton Athletics for 2019-20, as the women's soccer season begins Friday at St. Joe's at 5. The first home game is two days later, when the women's soccer team hosts Boston College.

Princeton has won the last two Ivy League women's soccer championships, doing so in decisive fashion two years ago and dramatic fashion last year. If you remember two years ago, Princeton went 7-0-0 in the Ivy League and then reached the NCAA quarterfinals, knocking off North Carolina, the most successful program in women's college soccer history, along the way.

Last year Princeton used a four-game Ivy winning streak - all by shutout - to end the regular season to earn a share of the league championship with Penn. Because the last of those four wins was a 1-0 win over Penn, the Tigers earned the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Had Princeton lost any of those four, there would have been no postseason.

This time around, Princeton is the preseason favorite in the league, having earned 10 of the 16 first-place votes in the preseason poll. What matters more than that is the fact that Princeton returns six of the seven players who scored goals a year ago, minus only Mimi Asom, a von Kienbusch Award finalist a year ago and one of the top scorers in program history. Princeton also has goalkeeper Natalie Grossi back for her senior year; Grossi is already the program record holder for career shutouts.

Princeton opens the Ivy League season on Sept. 28 at home against Yale. Before then, there will be eight non-league games, including four in eight days to start the season.

Of those eight non-league games between Aug. 30 and Sept. 22, there will be five on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The last of those is the most intriguing, as former Princeton head coach Julie Shackford will be back on the field she coached on for so long when she comes in with her new team, William & Mary.

That game is Sunday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m.

All of this kicks off this weekend, as amazing as that is. This weekend, also amazingly, is Labor Day weekend.

In other words, fall is almost here.

The weather yesterday was a small preview of that.