Today, I am preparing for Front Day 2023 even though it is at least several weeks away. Thanks to one of our OT friends, I will for the first time try Max Brenner hot chocolate. The package from New York, including two bags of drinking chocolate and two adorable Hug Mugs, what a cute name, arrived last week. I will still have several Lenox Santa mugs, purchased at a steep discount during the 2014 Dillard’s New Years Day sale, available for those who have received their invitations. The organ tuner is coming later this week, so we will have beautiful music to accompany the beautiful fellowship and delicious chocolate. Please be sure to include in this letter your hymn suggestions so that our organist can practice them.

Friends, as part of this preparation, I wanted to look back at the last six Front Days and ask your opinion on whether Front Day should continue to use Saturday as part of its definition. Mother defines Front Day as the first Saturday of Autumn when the following conditions are met:
Sunny skies
Dew point below 60
Lows below 60
Highs below 80

After learning of Great Great Grandmother’s definition for the holiday, do you believe that being Saturday is a requirement for Front Day? I appreciate your feedback and will bring it to Mother.

Recent Front Days:

2017: October 28. Had October 23 and 24 fallen on Saturdays, they would have been perfect Front Days. However, this year, October 28 saw an unorthodox Front Day. A strong Canadian front pushed its way southeastward in the early morning hours, with sprinkles throughout the morning. By noon, the northwest winds swooshed the clouds to the Gulf. It was a chilly but beautiful Front Day, perfect for sipping on hot chocolate.

2018: October 27. A prototypical Front Day with wall to wall sunshine, light winds, and highs in the mid-70s and lows in the mid-50s. It was the type of day that makes you happy to be a New Orleanian, happy to share in the gift of life with others, a day like I imagine the first Front Day in 1911.

2019: October 26. October of 2019 was one of the great Octobers in New Orleans weather history. It started as a scorcher, but after the first ten days of the month, we saw two weeks of Front Day weather. There were two imperfections, though. First, the collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel on October 12 was a tragedy that brought to light incompetence and fraud. Second, a minor tropical depression brought a 7” rainfall the day before Front Day. There was some minor street flooding, but far worse, was the cancellation of my favorite Boo at the Zoo’s Friday night. Mother was right about Front Day – it heralds the end of the tropical season for us.

2020: October 31. We were so close on October 17, but for the fourth year running, Front Day waited for the last Saturday of the month, which this year, landed also on Halloween. It was a double celebration for us.

2021: October 30. Again, we waited and waited, and again it landed on the last Sunday of October. The high was 68 and the low was 53.

2022: October 22. Finally, a Front Day that came before the last Saturday of October. We barely made it, with a high of 79, but we did. The low was 56 and it was another beautiful day we celebrated in appropriate fashion.

2023: ?
What are your guesses?

Faith, Hope, and Love,
TulaneLSU

This post was edited on 10/1/23 at 1:08 pm