Unlike the summer, the month of September is shaping up to be right on target as far as rainfall goes, says Environment Canada.
As of Saturday, 108.6 millimeters of rain have fallen in the Parry Sound area this month.
The average rainfall for the month of September is 115.2 millimeters.
 “It does look like we’re going to end up somewhere around that normal amount for the month of September,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson Monday morning. “You had a little soggier weekend than we did down here near Toronto. You can blame it on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. A lot of lake effect shower activity, combining with a disturbance in northern Ontario. So there was fair amount of shower activity through the Bruce Peninsula, Barrie, Oro, northwards up into Parry Sound.”
Coulson said Saturday was the wettest day over the last few days, with approximately 30 millimeters of rain falling.
“We really got back into a real fall-like pattern the last few days, as opposed to what we were dealing with for the first part of September. In these situations, very unsettled conditions, bands of these showers developing over the warmer waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron,” he said.
“So we’re really getting a temperature difference between the cooler air mass above and the warm air near the lakes below. The warm wants to rise so we get these showers and some of them are fairly intense kicking up with this system on the weekend. But still there’s a chance of sunny breaks, as the clouds come through.”
Temperatures are also set to climb up to a more normal range throughout the rest of the week, Coulson said.
“The way things are shaping up now we’re actually going to be bouncing back to more normal conditions, by Tuesday in fact. One more cool day in store and that’s today and we’re only forecasting a high of 14 (degrees Celsius). The normal high time of year is about 17, so that’s a few degrees cooler than normal. The rest of the work week around 16, 17, 18 degrees for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, which is where we should be and then a bit of a cool down again for the weekend and back to highs for Saturday and Sunday around 13 (degrees) or so.”
With the cooler temperatures, comes the changing of the leaves.
Coulson recommends checking out www.parkreports.com/fall. The site is maintained by Ontario Parks and provides updates the fall colours changing.
 “Sturgeon Bay Provincial Park is reporting a 20 to 29 per cent leaf change, dominant canopy colour is green,” he said adding that the peak time to see fall colours is when the dominate colour is orange and red, instead of green. “It’s really when you’ve got a good percentage of the canopy having changed and going into dominate colours of oranges and reds. In northern parts of Algonquin they’re already showing some fairly spectacular colour changes. It’s really when you get those deep oranges and deep reds as the dominate colour that we’re well-into the season.”