November Heatwave

Not to jinx things, but it sounds like we're in for a few days of warm weather, with the forecast calling for about a week of highs above 10°C, and some days of 15°C or more.

How unusual is that for November?

Here are the November daytime highs going back to 1997. The circled areas show either really warm days above 15°C, or strings of fairly-warm days above 10°C. So these mini-heatwaves aren't unprecedented, but they are pretty unusual.

Here are the 50 warmest days for this week of the year - November 3rd through 9th - going back to 1985.

Days above 10°C are pretty rare, with only 15 of them since 1985. And days above 15°C are even rarer, with only 2 of them. The longest recent hot-streaks were 1997 and 2010 which both only managed 3 days above 10°C.

That's just recent history, but what about going further back?

Here are the 50 warmest days for this week, going all the way back to the 1880s (there are actually 59 days here, since there is a 10-way tie for 50th place at 13.3°C).

So far the 2010s don't have any days in the top 50 for this week of the year, and the 1990s and 2000s together only have 3. That's in comparison to the 1940s which have 9, and even the 1880s have 7.

If 2016 is going to break any records this week, the low-hanging fruit are November 7th and 9th which both have record highs of 15°C. For the other days of the week the records are up in the 17-20°C range, and most of them were set during one particularly warm week in 1949.

Wherever we do end up, this should still be a nice change from the very cool October that we just had. In all of October there wasn't a single day above 15°C (the maximum was 14.7°C on the 3rd) and there were only 7 days above 10°C. By this time next week November might outdo that.