This race is all tied up.

Back at the beginning of September I looked at how warm 2016 was compared to the rest of the years in the records:

This chart has a pretty complicated explanation behind it, and if you're interested in what it all means it's probably easiest to go back to read: How warm is 2016? (September Edition)

But the short-version is that this is a day-by-day comparison of how warm or cold each day of the year is. Warm days get points, and cold days lose points. I think the calculation behind it all is pretty fair, and with this approach Edmonton's two previous warmest years were 1981 and 1987. But by April of this year, 2016 had moved into first place, and as of September 1st it was still solidly in the top spot.

Until October...

After the last 2 unseasonably cold weeks that entire lead has been lost, and 2016 is now sitting tied exactly with 1981.

In the next week we'll probably open up a bit of a lead again, because it's finally supposed to warm up, and back in 1981 this week of the year was a little cold. But then in November of 1981 things took off again.

Is there any chance that 2016 will take the top spot by yearend?

In this chart I've added the last ten November-Decembers on as dotted red lines in the upper-right, to show where we could end up.

If the next two months are as warm as they were in 2011, then 2016 would claim warmest-recorded-year. A repeat of 2015's "super" El Niño would put 2016 in contention, but still just a touch below 1981 and 1987. And if we follow any of the other years 2016 could end up anywhere from 3rd to 10th.

Which is not to say that things haven't been warm. For most of the year 2016 has been very warm, and 2015 is the 3rd warmest year on record.

This is the same chart, but the timeframe is shifted so that it compares September 2015 through August 2016 rather than calendar years. I did this back in September when I had first looked at these comparisons, and for that 12-month window (or really any mid-year window before October) 2015-2016 was well above all the rest. But in terms of calendar years at least, it looks like 2016 has probably given up first place.