More Big Heat Records Falls In Vermont, Northeast

Many cities in the Northeast, including here in Vermont
reported their hottest October on record this year.
The few cities that did not set the record came close.

If you're in Vermont and found it odd that you were sweating through the month of October, you were correct.

At Burlington, Vermont, October was by far the hottest on records, in data that goes back to the 1880s.

The mean temperature for October, 2017 was 58.6 degrees, a whopping 10.6 degrees above normal.

This month beat October, 1947 as the warmest by a full 2.2 degrees. It's almost unheard of for a monthly record to be set by more than half a degree, so this past month was truly impressive.

Every daily high temperature of the month was above normal, except one at midmonth that was right on normal, and yesterday, which was marginally cooler than normal.

All this comes after September, which was tied for the second hottest September on record. We're well on our way to have our warmest meteorological autumn (Sept. 1 - Nov. 30) on record. Of course that depends upon how November's weather works out.

Precipitation worked out to be very close to normal in Burlington in October, so at least that wasn't so far off the rails. It was a windy month, typical of October, with 10 days having gusts at or above 30 mph. This includes the epic wind storm on Monday, which brought a gust to 63 mph to Burlington.
I'm not sure how November will turn out - nobody is. But it looks like the first week or so of the month will swing wildly between much warmer than average weather and days that are near or a bit cooler than normal.

I did find out this morning from WBZ in Boston that Portland and Caribou, Maine, Hartford, Connecticut and Worcester, Massachusetts had its warmest October on record and Concord, New Hampshire and Boston had their second warmest.

New York's Central Park, where records go back 146 years, also had its hottest October on record. So the heat really is widespread through the Northeast.

Strong winds send leaves blowing off trees past a rainbow
in St. Albans, Vermont on October 24. Nearby Burlington,
Vermont set a record high of 78 for the date that day
in the midst of the warmest October on record.

This warm autumn has caused quite a few oddities out there in the real Vermont world. I will pick a cherry tomato and eat it today. In November! I will also gather some nice salad greens that have not been in a cold frame or anything like that. Some of my zinnias are still blooming. All this in northern Vermont in November!  

Several people have asked me what this warm autumn means for the kind of winter we'll have. I've seen all kinds of confident predictions about this winter, ranging from very warm to very harsh.

The short answer is nobody knows for sure what the winter will bring, and don't let them tell you otherwise. The National Weather Service does do long range forecasts as do many others, and for what it's worth, the NWS seems to suggest a rather warm winter for us. But they've certainly been wrong before.