Anderson's Bicycles is all geared up for a warm fall.

By Susan Wood

Don’t put away the shorts, swimsuits, garden tools, bikes or appetites for an Indian summer.

The mercury in South Lake Tahoe is expected to rise this week and may even meet or surpass the record high for Sept. 25 of 81 degrees, the National Weather Service in Reno reported Sunday.

It will definitely feel more like summer, even though the first day of fall  is Tuesday.

At the very least, Tahoe residents and visitors will see temperatures continuing to stay warmer than normal. Meteorologist Gina McGuire said the forecast for this week calls for highs 10 degrees above the normal 70-degree mark.

“We’ve been warm this month,” she said. “And we’ll probably tie the record this week.”

“Bring it on,” sums up the response from Doug Anderson, who owns Anderson Bicycle Rental on Highway 89. The South Lake Tahoe business has been around for 31 years, so it’s witnessed the ebb and flow of Mother Nature’s whims.

“I aim for Halloween weekend (to close), but in the last three years, I’ve been open until Thanksgiving,” he said, grinning. “I like this time of year. I hope we have an Indian summer.”

Even when the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area types board up their Tahoe cabins and second homes and head home, Anderson said he enjoys sitting in the warm fall sun waiting for customers.

The Bay Area may see inland temperatures hit the century mark this week, so those residents may not be through with cooling off in Tahoe yet.

Still, most people in Tahoe would be advised to bundle up at night as the regional highs will be offset by an extreme temperature differential by as much as 50 degrees on some days this week. Overnight lows are predicted to drop to the mid-30s at night.

The warm September coincides with the latest prediction from the “2010 Old Farmer’s Almanac”, which forecasts an Indian summer as late as early November for the Intermountain region, which includes the Central Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Tahoe, which sits on the triangular corner of this region with the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, may also see a winter characterized as mild and wet.

Extremes could be the name of the game this winter in Tahoe, according to the Almanac, which boasts an 80 percent accuracy rate. November’s unseasonable warm temperatures are predicted to give way to much shoveling in December and power outages in January. Look for an early February welcome mat to birds and an early thaw in March may launch spring and cut winter short, the publication claims.

Even the “Almanac” has something to say about climate-change debate.

“The prolonged low level of sunspot and space weather activity in the early stages of Solar Cycle 24 reinforces our belief that we are at the beginning of a period of significant change,” it reads under the General Weather Forecast and Report section. It explains the atmosphere’s gradual cooling could be offset by “warming caused by increased greenhouse gases.”

The “Almanac” agrees with other climate reports that the winter of 2009-10 will experience conditions of El Nino, a tropical weather phenomenon characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. However, a mild El Nino should be in store.

Skiers may rejoice at the prospect of the above normal snowfall prediction for the Intermountain region by the “Almanac”.

Susan Wood is a freelance writer based out of South Lake Tahoe. She may be reached at copysue1@yahoo.com