The past months have been cool and dry. Now it's time for fall.

Milwaukee - Summer is over. Maybe now we can put away our mittens and sweat shirts.

If it seemed as if summer lasted a day or two this year, the meteorologists who keep track of these things concur.

Madison shivered through its coldest July on record, Miller Park's roof has been closed 34 times, the high temperature in Milwaukee on July 1 reached only 64 degrees, and it was eerily quiet at the National Weather Service office in Green Bay.

While it's possible there might have been fewer cases of sunburn and heat stroke, the relatively cold and dry weather did have its benefits.

The Green Bay office of the weather service issued zero severe weather reports. That means there were no tornadoes, no hail measuring at least 1 inch or thunderstorms with winds of 58 mph or greater in an area that covers roughly the state's top right quadrant.

"For farmers and people that don't want to put new roofs on their houses, that's a good thing," said Jeff Craven, National Weather Service science and operations officer in Sullivan.

Though purists will point out that summer actually ends Sept. 21, weather forecasters treat it as June, July and August. This year's meteorological summer will be remembered for being as cool and dry as a martini.

In Milwaukee, the average temperature in July was 3.5 degrees below normal with only 0.71 inch of rain, the fourth driest on record. August was 1.5 degrees below normal.

Madison's average July temperature - a combination of the daily highs and lows - was 65.7 degrees, 5.9 degrees below normal. That easily beat the previous record of 66.7 degrees set in 1891.

What might seem odd is that while the Midwest was bundled up and blowing on its fingers to stay warm, folks in the West were sweating. Triple-digit temperatures in Seattle set records, Arizona was steamy even by Arizona standards, and massive wildfires in California were spurred by hot and dry conditions.

That's actually common, Craven said, because often when one part of the country is hot, the other will be cold because of atmospheric troughs and ridges - similar to the peak and trough of a wave - that stretch across the globe.

This summer the jet stream came through central Canada and dipped into the southern Appalachian Mountains, which brought a cold, northwest flow pattern right through the Great Lakes region.

"These patterns tend to sit and be stagnant for a couple of months," Craven said. "Why that pattern set up, I can't really tell you."

Baseball fans noticed. The retractable roof at Miller Park has closed 34 times this year, compared with 33 all last season. Still, that's not close to the record number of roof closings of 49 in 2006.

But then the Brewers still have 16 home games this month.

Though a number of factors affect roof-closing decisions, a loose threshold is 60 degrees, said Brewers spokesman Tyler Barnes. On Saturday night, the roof was closed as temperatures dipped to the 50s.

"I think Saturday was a day where there wasn't a huge concern about precipitation for the bulk of the game, but the temperature was a little uncomfortable," Barnes said. "That's pretty unusual for an August game."

However, if there is one silver lining in this cloud, some climate experts predict a warmer winter than normal.

The El Niño weather developing in the Pacific Ocean will likely mean a slightly higher than normal chance for warm temperatures, said Steve Hilberg, director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center in Champaign, Ill.

That could be good news for Wisconsin farmers facing a longer growing season because cool temperatures and a dearth of rain have slowed the development of crops.

El Niño weather events in the past have not usually affected the first date of the fall freeze, when temperatures drop to 32 degrees or lower and the growing season ends, which means farmers anxiously watching their fields and the weather report likely will not be forced to harvest their crops early.

But the Farmers' Almanac says numbing cold will predominate the Midwest.