Columbus Day 2020: what's the weather forecast?

Columbus Day 2020 is today, October 12. The holiday is always observed on the second Monday in October.

To find out what the weather will be like where you are, check your local weather on any number of apps or websites. We recommend these five, all free for Android and iOS, and most of them have websites too:

Columbus Day weather throughout history

According to the National Weather Service in the last 149 years, the average high temperature on Columbus Day recorded in Buffalo, New York was 61F degrees and the average low is 43F degrees.

The highest temperature recorded on Columbus Day was 85F on October 13, 1975.

The lowest temperature recorded on Columbus Day was 29F degrees set on October 14, 1991.

On Columbus Day of 2017 remnants from Tropical System Nate passed across Western New York, bringing a holiday precipitation record 2.39 inches of rain to Rochester. It’s extremely rare that it rains at all on Columbus Day in this region.

Columbus Day in 2020: Hurricane Delta aftermath

For much of the Southeast, this year Columbus Day is falling just days after Hurricane Delta wreaks havoc across the entire region.

The storm has already battered Louisiana leaving behind remnants of death and destruction. The storm weakened to a post-tropical cyclone as it made landfall in Creole, Louisiana and spawned tornadoes and flooding.

Flash flooding could stretch from Georgia to Virginia reports CNN, and on Sunday morning across Louisiana, parts of Texas and Mississippi had power cuts.

The Weather Channel predicts that rainfall from Delta will spread into parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast Interstate 95 corridor through Monday.

Hurricane Delta: path of destruction

Louisiana governor John Edwards has blamed the storm for the death of an 86 year old man in St. Martin Parish, who passed away after a fire started while he was fuelling a generator.

A train derailed in Georgia Sunday in the remnants of the hurricane, which left parts of the state hammered by heavy rain and flash floods.

Click here to see the storm’s path on CNN.

Why do we celebrate Columbus Day and why is it controversial?

Columbus days celebrates the "discovery" of modern America by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Today, the holiday is celebrated alongside Indigenous People’s Day, and some states have even officially changed the name of the day to this title to reflect controversy surrounding the assumption that America was unpopulated until October 12, 1492.

Columbus was in fact originally under commission by the Spanish monarchy to find a faster route to Asia and instead landed on what is now known as North America. Before he arrived, there were millions of Native Americans already inhabiting North America. The arrival of European settlers brought about the death of a large proportion of the indigenous population.