Remarkable Vermont October Record Heat

Record October heat has kept flowers
blooming in my gardens, St. Albans,
Vermont in the normally chilly northwest
corner of the state.  

It's been quite a stretch of weirdly warm weather here in Vermont lately, especially in the Champlain Valley.

What got most of the headlines were the daily record high temperatures of 79 and 80 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that wasn't the weirdest part of this heat wave.

Temperatures that warm do happen in October from time to time in Vermont. In fact the hottest October day high on record for any date in Burlington during the month was 85 degrees.

Usually, though, these October warm spells hit when the sky is clear and humidity is low. When that happens, temperatures usually cool into the 40s or low 50s at night, even if it was around 80 during the day.

This time, there were clouds and rather high humidity around. So the temperature was continuously above 60 degrees Tuesday through Thursday. In fact, as of 6 a.m. Friday, the temperature in Burlington  STILL hadn't fallen below 60 yet. But that will either happen briefly this Friday morning, or tonight.

Even so, I don't recall ever seeing overnight low temperatures stay that high for so long. The low temperatures this week were warmer than the normal afternoon highs for mid-October, which are in the upper 50s.

With a high temperature of 80 and a low of 68 on Wednesday, the average temperatue was 74 degrees. That tied the record for the warmest mean temperature for any day in October in Burlington, in records going back to the 1880s.

The low of 68 degrees is eight degrees warmer than the normal low in July.  Even in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in the chilly Northeast Kingdom, the temperature never made it below 60 degres on Wednesday.

Rain held temperatures down slightly on Thursday, but not much. And the humidity was higher than I can recall seeing in October.  The dewpoint is a measure of how humid the air is. If the dewpoint is 60 degrees, it's sort of humid, and that's typical for mid-summer.

Thursday afternoon, the dewpoint reached as high as 67 degrees up here in Burlington. That's very sticky even by July standards.

Not surprisingly, all this means the month of October as a whole is running very much on the warm side --seven degrees above normal at last check.

But things have a way of balancing out.  It'll be a little cooler today and Saturday, and a strong cold front crashing through on Saturday will make temperatures plunge.

High temperatures in Vermont will only reach the 40s on Sunday, and it'll probably snow a little on the mountain tops.  Afternoon high temperatures will barely make it to 50 during most of next week.

That's a bit cooler than normal for mid to late October, but it's nothing extraordinary at all. But after our foliage season summer, it will seem frigid.