My favorite schoolteacher and I escaped to the beach this weekend, and found we had picked the very best autumn weekend to be there. Kudos to the Bavarian Oktoberfest and Endless Summer Cruisin' antique car rally for getting their dates right. Highs in the 70s, light breeze perfect for kites, water still swimmable (for kids and surfers; not this boy). And the mild, sunny autumn weather at the shore is continuing into the early workweek, alas, without us.

As a special bonus, beachgoers this weekend (and anyone else who happened to look up) were treated to a spectacular display of parhelions or "sun dogs" and solar halos thanks to the high, thin clouds of ice crystals. It was the most complex and persistent display of these phenomena I have ever seen. The sun dogs were visible at least from late morning when we hit the beach right up until sunset. 

If any of this was visible from the Baltimore area, please let us know. The photo above is a stock photo from the NOAA Photo Library. I didn't have a camera. (Doh!)  But it looks very much like what we saw Saturday from the Delaware shore. If you have a photo of this weekend's phenomenon, please send it in.

Forecasters out at Sterling are looking for highs in the upper 70s to low 80s again today for Central Maryland, thanks to high pressure building across the southeastern U.S. The highs are still well short of the records for Baltimore at this time of year. But they are also a delightful 10 degrees above the long-term averages.

Once the high begins to move off at mid-week, there's a cold front waiting to pass by. That will bring us some clouds Thursday, with cooler weather on the other side. Look for highs back where they belong, in the 60s, for the end of the workweek and into the 60s for the weekend.