Say goodbye to summer. It ended at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, the official start of autumn.

Wednesday was the fall equinox, one of only two times a year when day and night are of equal length as the sun crosses the equator.

Cooler weather is ahead, but it should be a normal fall for the Lawrence area, 6News meteorologist Matt Sayers said.

“Temperatures for the fall months should be about average,” Sayers said.

So when October begins a week from Friday, the average temperature for the first part of the month will be 77 degrees with the average low at 62 degrees, Sayers said. In November it drops to 62 degrees and 47 degrees, he said.

Rainfall for those two months should be at or below average, Sayers said. The average for October is 3.4 inches and 2.57 inches for November.

The weather this year has been good to fall garden crops such as apples and pumpkins, local growers said. Apples are perhaps some of the best ever, said Greg Shipe, owner of Davenport Orchards & Winery, 1394 E. 1900 Road near Eudora.

“We got through the frosts last spring, and that helped,” Shipe said. “And we had a lot of rain all year. We had a lot of cool days, and that colors up the apples and makes them good and red.”

Pumpkins have done well, too, said Larry Schaake, owner of Schaake Pumpkin Patch east of Lawrence at 1791 N. 1500 Road.

John Golden, Lawrence, volunteers his time Wednesday picking apples at Davenport Orchards & Winery, 1394 E. 1900 Road, for East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp. The orchard will be open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

“They are larger in diameter and darker-colored than we’ve seen in a while,” Schaake said.

It is still too early to tell what kind of winter the Lawrence area will experience, Sayers said. That’s because the jet stream — atmospheric winds that carry weather fronts — hasn’t yet begun to form a pattern, he said. The winds are at their strongest during the winter and their weakest during the summer.

“Over October and November it (the jet stream) picks up and starts to show itself and what the weather pattern is going to be,” Sayers said.

Janet Schaake looks over some of the 200-pound-plus pumpkins that her family will have for sale from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Schaake Pumpkin Patch, 3 1/2 miles east of Lawrence at 1791 N. 1500 Road.