Connecticut has faced some 70 wildfires since Oct. 21. One firefighter has died and others have been injured. The fire magnitudes have varied. The Hawthorne fire in Berlin is the biggest to date — 127 acres as of Wednesday afternoon.

Their causes vary too, but the underlying conditions for each are the same: abnormally dry conditions that has left a landscape primed to burn.

It turns out Connecticut is not the only state that has faced an exceedingly dry October. And it isn’t experiencing the worst of it.

Data through Oct. 29, released Thursday, show that except for a thin northern strip and small area in the southern tip of Fairfield County, Connecticut was ranked as “abnormally dry,” so not quite in a drought, by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a joint operation of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The two northern and southern areas are in moderate drought — the lowest drought level.

That is a little worse than last week when a portion of central Connecticut still had no designation and only a tiny corner was designated as moderate drought.

NOAA’s preliminary estimate based on the new data is that 87.16% of the continental U.S. is now abnormally dry or worse. That would be a record.

National data provided by NOAA from the Southeast Regional Climate Center show there was a small amount of rain in October at the various reporting sites around the state. That is a clear contrast to the big zeros it shows from New York to Philadelphia and across the south central U.S.

A ranking map shows that only Connecticut’s Stamford/Bridgeport reporting station has recorded its lowest October precipitation on record — which goes back 77 years. On this interactive map, a monthly record is indicated by the number 1. The other reporting stations, some with longer and some with shorter reporting histories, rank their areas from second to sixth driest Octobers.

But in the New York City to Philadelphia corridor and across the south there are a lot of number ones for October.

That’s splitting hairs, to some degree — it IS dry here and in many locations. The bigger question may be, what’s causing the lack of rain?

According to Allison Santorelli, acting warning coordination meteorologist for NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center, there has been a “stark pattern shift” since mid-September that has resulted in a stubborn and strong high pressure — an upper level ridge parked across much of the eastern half of the country.

“That’s what’s led to the anomalously dry weather in many locations from the central U.S. into the eastern U.S.,” she said. “And that has generally blocked any moisture from coming north from the Gulf of Mexico.”

Santorelli said there looks to be a bit of a break coming for the central region in the next week. “But at least in the Eastern U.S., it looks like we’re going to be kind of stuck, for lack of a better term, underneath this blocky upper ridge for now.”

October does tend to be a pretty dry month for this area, but not this dry and it’s generally not the driest time of the year.

“The fire weather season, if you want to call it that, in the tri-state area, is basically April,” said Erica Grow Cei, a meteorologist and spokesperson for NOAA. “You’ve got all those dry leaves on the ground from last year, and the sun is starting to come up, and it’s still dry, and you get a little breeze. Someone flicks their cigarette out the window, and next thing you know, you’ve got a little fire.”

Which begs the big question — is the unusual dryness right now related to climate change? That’s unknown.

Will we ever know? Also unknown.

Grow Cei explained that systems like the one that is stuck now get stuck because the warm and especially dry air in it is very dense, which just makes it harder to budge. There’s also less of a moisture source coming from below because the leaves on the trees this time of year have stopped undergoing photosynthesis, which would release moisture through the leaves.

“It just helps to keep things stuck,” she said.

The high winds the area has experienced lately will dry things out even faster.

Logic would tell you a state like Connecticut with an extensive shoreline should provide more moisture. But Grow Cei said this time of year there is less evaporation.

“Our sun angle right now is similar to what it is on Valentine’s Day,” she said.

To get things moving again, something big like a brewing tropical storm would need to occur — not that anyone is wishing for that with another month to go in the official hurricane season. “There could be some other large enough scale disturbance that rides through the jet that disrupts the pattern,” she said.

But that hasn’t happened here yet and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center doesn’t show much precipitation showing up into mid-November.

For now, the predictions for winter are not too out-of-the-ordinary for New England. Temperatures are likely to be a little above normal. And precipitation? Normal.

It’s Halloween and the temperatures on Thursday could break records with highs reaching between 74 and 83 degrees.

We will have plenty of sunshine, then clouds will develop Thursday night.

But the night will be dry for ghosts and goblins and temperatures will be in the lower 70s. 

We will have passing showers on Friday morning and clearing, windy and quite warm temperatures on Friday afternoon.

The weather will be fair and much cooler over the weekend. 

Public systems that are supposed to help young people often end up perpetuating disconnection.  That’s what we learn when we listen to young people who are disconnected from school and employment in Connecticut.

Through its Connecticut Opportunity Project initiative, Dalio Education recently released the final report in its research series on Connecticut’s Unspoken Crisis: “Elevating the Voices of Young People,” prepared by Community Science. The power of this study to inform our understanding of how to successfully re-engage the 63,000 young people in Connecticut who are disconnected lies in its design: the data source for the report’s findings and recommendations are the voices and experiences of the young people directly impacted by this crisis.

When we listen, we hear how one young man ended up in juvenile probation because of his school’s response to his absenteeism. In his words, he was in juvenile detention for “truancy, not going to school, not showing up, not being where I was supposed to be at.”

We also hear how young people in need of housing hesitate to seek supports for fear of triggering child welfare system involvement, with one young woman revealing: “When people do the 211 call and say certain things, next thing you know DCF’s involved. When it’s really not even their fault or anything, but they’re not doing anything bad.”

A total of 74 young people between the ages of 14 to 26 were interviewed by Community Science from across seven cities, with an overrepresentation of Black and Hispanic/Latino(a) young people, and more men relative to women, mirroring the demographic trends we see in the population of young people in Connecticut who are experiencing disconnection. Community Science explored young people’s experience in their community, interactions with different public systems (education, criminal justice, child welfare, healthcare, and housing), and hopes and aspirations for the future.

Young people further shaped the study through the creation of a Community Advisory Group (CAG) that was convened regularly to inform the collection and interpretation of data. Nine of the 13 CAG members were young people who had experienced disconnection. They were joined by four professionals who work with or in support of this youth population and served as validators for their perspectives while providing additional context, in terms of the challenges and assets of communities as well as the racial, ethnic, and cultural dynamics that exist in Connecticut. We created a space where people could show up authentically to share their experiences and feedback, to help test the analysis and ensure the key themes emerging from the study resonate with their experiences in their communities. All of the major decisions made by the research team were shaped by input from the CAG, including pivots made based on insights they shared.

From this report, we see that disconnection from education is often a precursor to interaction with other systems, and that once young people are engaged in multiple systems, it can produce an almost self-perpetuating cycle that leads to long-term disconnection, from school and work as well as from other resources, which reinforces the challenges young people are facing.

We also learn about the important role of social capital and how lack of access to it impacts young people, with the limited nature of resources and supports available to young people making it that much more difficult for them to weather the complex challenges they face.

Through improved system coordination coupled with culturally-responsive, trauma-informed practices that prioritize rehabilitation over punitive measures, we can do better by our young people, and help them achieve goals and aspirations they hold that are so much bigger than just themselves, including their children, families, and communities. As one young woman reflected: “Construction would really help me because I really want to build something for the children. I want to build something for the homeless where you don’t have to be on the streets no more. I want to do that in every community that I go to. I want to help every community that I can.”

The goals and aspirations of the young people interviewed for this report are not unlike those that many young people would share – financial security, educational attainment, gainful employment. Their definitions of success also reflect the profound challenges they have had to navigate with determination and hope for a better future. According to one young person: “…success means to me when I’m wealthy enough, my kids or my future generation wouldn’t have to worry about anything. I feel like that’s real success.”

Through these reflections, one key theme that shines through is our young people’s incredible “resilience, resourcefulness, and determination to transcend the limitations imposed upon them by societal norms and structural inequalities,” in the words of the report’s authors.

This report also demonstrates how we can position the young people impacted as the ones not only conveying their needs but also as part of developing the solutions. This approach enables the creation of solutions that are practical, responsive, and fully actualized because they are designed in partnership with those whose needs they are designed to meet. That’s how we address root causes and generate real change.

Samantha Miller is a Portfolio Director for the Connecticut Opportunity Project at Dalio Education