Despite North American Cold Blob, Globe Was Second Warmest In October

The western and central United States had one of their coldest Octobers on record this year.

That was a big anomaly: Pretty much all of the rest of the world was unusually warm, enough to make October, 2019, the second warmest on record for Earth as a whole.   Which goes to prove, if it's cold in your backyard, that doesn't mean climate change is canceled.

Accordig to the NOAA's National Centers for Climate Information, the central United States was the only real cold spot in a warm world last month. Says the agency:

"Record warm October temperatures were mainly present across parts of the North and Western Pacific Ocean and northeastern Canada, as well as scattered across parts of the South Atlantic Ocean, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and South America."

Additionally, Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest on record for October.  Antarctic sea ice extent was also below normal.

Some scientists are tying the unusually cold weather in the central and western United States in October, and the record chill in the eastern two thirds of the United States so far in November to that lack of sea ice.

When the jet stream is wavier than usual - meaning bigger northward bulges toward the north and deeper dips southward, the weather gets more extreme.  A big dip in the jet stream has repeatedly set up over central North America, causing the cold waves in the United States.

Some research suggests that a lack of Arctic sea ice can make the jet stream wavier, and make it stick in more persistent patterns.  This could be one major contributing factor making muh of the United States cold while most of the rest of the world bakes.

I would add that this research still isn't conclusive. Plus, with or without climate change, there is still going to be variability in weather and climate month to month and in different locations.  Climate change does not cancel out other factors that can influence the weather in your back yard, as I've already noted.

On top of all this, the year 2019 so far is the second warmest on record for the Globe.  Highlighting the persistence of weather patterns this year, it looks like parts of the central United States will be an outlier.  The whole year has been generally chilly in that part of the world.

Usually and traditionally,  when global temperatures are near record highs, there's an El Nino pattern going on, which is a warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean off South America.  El Ninos tend to make the world a little hotter than it otherwise would be. But there's no El Nino going on now, which makes the October heat pretty impressive.

November, as we well know, has been brutally cold around here in Vermont. Still, I bet on a global basis, the current month will be another very warm one.

No Snow In Forecast, But Now's The Time We Can Start Getting It

A bit of snow in my St. Albans, Vermont yard one year ago today.
No snow in the forecast for the next few days, but it's surely coming.

On this date last year - October 24 - it snowed a little in most of northern Vermont.

It wasn't much in most places.  I got about an inch in St. Albans and a some places in the Northeast Kingdom picked up a few inches.

Though no snow is in the forecast for the next few days, last year's events are a reminder. Time to get the snow tires on, as we can get winter weather at any time now.

Vermont does have a history of October snows, some of them pretty substantial. And some of them came earlier than this.

I turn to the Vermont Weather Book by David Ludlum for examples. Details are sketchy on one the biggest Vermont October snowstorm on record because it happened so long ago. But on October 9, 1804 a moisture-rich hurricane swept up from the south.

A very cold air mass was in place over interior New England, so a lot of this came down as snow. Some places got a foot and a half of snow, with major tree damage because leaves were still on.

In modern times, nothing can beat the epic snow on October 4, 1987.  More than 18 inches of snow fell on southwestern Vermont and adjacent parts of Massachusettts and New York, including in the Albany, New York area.

 Totals of more than six inches extended through most of Vermont, except the Champlain Valley.

Wild scene in Bennington Vermont on October 4, 1987.

Of course in this instance, too, leaves were on the trees, so there was massive destruction and long power outages during the height of the fall foliage tourism season in Vermont.

Another biggie on October 10, 1925 dumped up to 18 inches of snow on the high elevations and up to a foot in the low and middle elevations of Vermont.

The storm was accompanied by high winds, so there was a lot of drifting. Road clearing wasn't great in those days and cars were relatively new.  Many got stuck in drifts up to five feet high. Some cars around Stowe were snowed in until the next spring.

Substantial October snowstorms also hit Vermont in 1933, 1969 and 1979. A few towns in southern Vermont got more than six inches of snow in the Octobers of 2005,  2011 and 2016.  The October 25, 2005 storm was particularly bad. Some leaves were still on the trees - it had been an otherwise warm autumn.  About 100,000 Vermont customers lost power, some for a week. Up to 14 inches of snow fell in Underhill.

So yeah, it can get wintry this time of year. It's just a matter of time before we get hit.

Frost/Freeze To End Growing Season In Most Of Vermont

It was the chilliest early morning since last spring today when I took the dogs out to their business here in  St. Albans.

Just before dawn, drizzle was propelled by winds gusting over 25 mph and the temperature was only in the mid-40s. Raw!

That sets the stage for tonight. It'll clear up during the day today, and winds will die down tonight. Those are perfect conditions for a fall frost and freeze. It also won't get that warm today, so temperatures won't have to drop much tonight to get into the danger zone.

Most of Vermont is under a freeze warning, except for the Champlain Valley, which is under a frost advisory.

Some sections of Vermont have already had frost and freezes, but tonight's will be the most widespread of the season.  It's the end of the garden for most of us, I'm afraid.

This is actually coming right about on schedule.

For instance, in Rutland and Montpelier, the average first freeze of the season is on September 30.  In Burlington, the average first freeze is October 7.  So we're right in the ballpark this year.

In the Champlain Valley, including Burlington, it might not even get below freezing tonight.  But it doesn't have to get down to 32 degrees to have frost. Temperatures are typically measured at about five feet off the ground.

On clear, calm nights, like what is in the forecast tonight, it can be 35 degrees at eye level, but 32 degrees right on the ground. (cold air sinks, right?)  That's why the Champlain Valley is under a frost advisory, and not a freeze warning in other parts of Vermont.  Away from the lake, temperatures are indeed forecast to go below 32 degrees tonight.

Two corners of Vermont are not under any advisories tonight. Grand Isle, with its proximity to relatively warm Lake Champlain waters, will stay relatively warm and should mostly avoid a frost.

Essex County, way up there in the Northeast Kingdom, is also not under any freeze alerts. That's because that area has already had a killing freeze, so it's pretty much pointless to issue another freeze warning up there.

It'll be a crisp, nice fall day Saturday, but it will cloud up Sunday in advance of the next rainstorm.

Winter In October To Last Awhile

Many Vermont webcam images this morning showed snow on the ground,
including here, with an image from Lincoln Peak at the
Sugarbush Ski Resort in Warren.

While working in a client's garden in Charlotte, Vermont yesterday, I saw and felt our plunge into an early winter like state.

I started a little after noon when the skies cleared and a warm sun popped out. I started working in a t-shirt.

Then, I worked through the afternoon adding layers of shirts as the temperature dropped. I finally gave up and went home in the late afternoon when it started to sleet.

A little sleet fell on Burlington, Vermont yesterday, too, making October 17 the first day of the winter season with frozen precipitation. It was just a trace. Nothing accumulated. But it's coming.

Vermont and most of the Northeast are in this spell of cold for awhile. Yes, we will get a nice squirt of mild air Friday afternoon into Saturday morning between cold fronts, but that's it for awhile. A relentless, quick series of cold fronts will come through Saturday through the first half of next week, keeping our temperatures well below normal.

I can certainly say the growing season is over. The immediate shore of Lake Champlain has stayed above freezing so far, but that's it. Otherwise, we're pretty much done gardening until spring.

If you like snow, you'll like this weather pattern. This morning, many areas of Vermont had at least a dusting of snow on the ground. We even heard a few reports of locally slick roads.

Coming up. there will be little or no accumulation in the valleys through this period, but snow flurries will reach valley floors from time to time. Especially Sunday. A light snow pack will continue to build in the mountains. Also, some of the more aggressive ski areas are making snow.

Killington Ski Resort always tries to be the first to open in the season. Usually that hits in October. True to form, Killington announced they are open for business for the season starting tomorrow, October 19.

Killington and other resorts will be able to make a lot of snow over the next few days, which might insulate them from any late season Indian Summers come November. We'll see on that one.

The cold fronts coming through will only throw light precipitation our way. There are hints of a somewhat more decent storm around October 26 or 27. Just for laughs and giggles, one computer model suggested that storm would dump a good foot or more of snow across most of Vermont.

Don't worry. That computer model looked like it was totally out of whack. My first guess - and at this point it's only a guess - that we'll get a middling rain storm around that time period, with maybe a little snow in the mountains. It's really too soon for snow shovels and snow days at school.

Warm World Continued In October

Yearly global October temperatures from the
1880s to now. See a trend?

A strong cold front is sweeping past my house in northwestern Vermont this Sunday morning as I write this, and rain will soon change to snow showers.

It's going to be another chilly day, which has been the trend around here for the past couple of weeks.

However, the worldwide warmth seems to be continuing, at least as far as NOAA data from October is concerned.

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information put out their monthly report late last week and said October on a global scale was the fourth warmest on record.

What makes coming in at Number 4 rather than Number 1 is that we are settling into a La Nina pattern in the Pacific, which tends to cool the world a little bit. The opposite, El Nino, warms the eastern Pacific and tends to make the entire globe a bit warmer. The record hot years of 2015 and 2016 were generally El Nino, or at least neutral years.

So far, 2017 is the third warmest year on record, with only 2015 and 2016 being hotter.

Here in Vermont, we contributed our tiny bit to make October the third hottest global one on record. Vermont had, by far, its hottest October on record.

So far here in Vermont, November is running a little cooler than normal, but that obiously won't have much of an effect on the overall global temperature readings for the month.

Because of global warming, we are permanently having warmer than normal months on a global basis. The only question about November is how much warmer than average will it be, and will it be another top 10 warmest November?

We'll watch that report when it comes out in another month.

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.

October Was Another Very Warm Month In Vermont

Decent fall foliage and even some green leaves on
trees around my garden shed in northwestern Vermont
this morning. Usually, the woods are dull and gray by
November 1, but foliage lingers after a warm autumn

Given the chilly, damp weather of the past week or so, it doesn't seem like October in Vermont was all that warm.

However, the first three weeks of the month were totally toasty, so at least at the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont, we managed to tie for the 10th hottest October on record.  

The mean temperature for the month was 52.3 degrees or 4.3 degrees warmer than normal. We tied with 1946 and 1897 for tenth hottest October.

This continues what has been an extraordinarily warm year in Vermont so far. In Burlington, the first ten months of the year averaged 3.1 degrees warmer than normal. That's pretty extreme for a ten month period.

If November and December are normal to mild, we could easily end up with our hottest year on record. (Though some long range models suggest a frigid second half of November and December, we'll see about that.)

The warmth is still visible around us. Though foliage is definitely past peak in Vermont's Champlain Valley, there are still some very nice splashes of color on November 1, something I've never seen before.

Sure, we usually do have the occasional yellow larch and late season birch with bursts of yellow, and we usually have sad rust colored oak leaves clinging to the trees November 1.

But there's still a few green leaves out my window, and some lovely red and orange sugar maple leaves still brightening the hillsides around my northwestern Vermont house.

I don't know exactly what all of November will bring, but the first few days will be mild. It could hit 60 Wednesday before near normal temperatures return this coming weekend. Still no Arctic blasts on the immediate horizon, though.

Blast Of October Heat Crosses The Nation

A larg wildfire in Colorado Monday set off by
record heat and dry conditions. 

It might be well into fall, but summer is living on this week in much of the nation.

In some places, in a big way.    

Dodge City, Kansas, for instance, got all the way up to 101 degrees Monday. That's the hottest it's been there in October since they started keep track of such things in the late 1800s.

It's all the more impressive since we're well into October, not the warmer beginning of the month.

Not to be outdone, the little town of Slapout, Oklahoma reached 102 degrees on Sunday, as did Perrytown, Texas. That's the lastest in the season it's been so hot in those areas, too.

Lots of cities over a widespread area of the nation reported record highs Monday, including St. Louis, Missouri at 91 degrees, Nashville, Tennessee at 86, Tulsa, Oklahoma at 90 degrees and La Guardia airport in New York at 83 degrees.

The hot, dry weather set off wildfires, including a bad one in Colorado that destroyed at least one home and forced the evacuation of nearly 200 others.

Record warmth will continue today in the eastern third of the nation.  High temperatures will get into the 80s as far north as Vermont today.

Southern California is under a fire alert this week as hot, very dry and windy weather is forecast.

It is October, so it won't last. It looks like it might snow a little in the higher elevations of northern New England by Saturday.

October Weather Was More Or Less Normal In Vermont, Believe It Or Not

Some foliage managed to cling to trees on a Richmond,
Vermont hillside despite the fact we've gotten to November.  

November is getting off to a mild start in Vermont this year, with highs forecast in the 60s, possibly touching 70 in the warm spots midweek.

So we catch a break.

Many of us are saying that really IS a break, since October seemed a bit wintry.

After all, lots of gorgeous "snoliage" photos circulated, which showed peak autumn foliage across much of the state dusted with snow at midmonth.  

The reason October felt so cold and wet and stormy is because it was so warm and dry heading into the month, so anything felt wintry

The weather stats coming back for Vermont in October show a month that was just a bit cooler, and a bit drier than normal.

At Burlington, October was just a third of a degree cooler than normal - basically a rounding error. Other parts of Vermont were chillier, with Montpelier coming in at 2 degrees cooler than normal and St. Johnsbury 1.7 degrees on the nippy side.

A snow squall dusts some fall
foliage in St. Albans, Vermont
on Oct. 18 2015. Despite
this wintry weather, October
was only slightly cooler than normal. 

Those kinds of departures from normal are not incredible, for sure.

Precipitation was pretty unremarkable in October as well. Burlington was a little less than half an inch on the dry side. (There's normally roughly 3.6 inches or rain during October).

Other locations in Vermont clocked in at about an inch below normal. Kinda dry, yes, but not exactly an extreme drought.

That wintry precipitation that brought our snoliage photos wasn't abnormal, either. Valley locations in Vermont typically get a dusting of snow in October, and the mountains usually get a few inches.

If it seemed stormy, maybe it was because of the wind. The last 15 days of the month featured eight days in Burlington with gusts over 30 mph.

Still, as November opened Sunday, there was a surprising amount of lingering foliage left in the Champlain Valley. Definitely well past peak, but still more colorful than the stick season totally bare branches that normally greet us as November opens.

That's because September was so warm that foliage season definitely ran late. November, as I noted, is off to a remarkably warm start too, so if any flowers survived the frosts of October in your garden, they might hang on for just a bit longer. Enjoy!

In Vermont, November Comes In October

The joy of October is over, and dark November
looms over Vermont. Here are some leaves from
newly barren trees in Burlington, Vermont. 

November arrived here in Vermont over the past couple of days.

I know, I know, it's October 30. But what I'm talking about is the mood of the month, which doesn't line up with the calendar. I think that's true of almost any time of year.

October is bright and beautiful. November is funereal.

Autumn - the part involving brilliant foliage, bright sunshine and hordes of tourists, this year lasted longer than it usually does up here. All thanks to a record warm September and bursts of mild weather earlier this month.

On Sunday, October 25, I took a drive from my home in St. Albans, in the northwestern corner of the state down to West Rutland, in the southwest to visit family.

I stuck pretty much to the "tropical" Champlain Valley, or at least tropical compared to the rest of the state. The foliage usually hangs on longer here than in the more mountainous parts of Vermont.

Still, I was stunned by how pretty the landscape still was. Usually by October 25, the foliage is gone except for some leftover pockets of brilliant birch or larch or maybe part of one or two particularly vigorous sugar maples.

But on Sunday, the foliage was still gorgeous, especially along reliable scenic Route 30 through rural Cornwall, Sudbury and Whiting.

Of course this state of affairs couldn't last forever. On Wednesday, a gusty rainstorm - fueled in part by Hurricane Patricia, arrived to darken the sky to deep gray November hue and start stripping the remaining leaves from the trees.

If I had to pick an exact moment November arrived for me here in Vermont, it was at 12:58 p.m. yesterday.

I was working for a client, cleaning up their garden. It had been quite a mild morning ahead of a cold front, with intervals of sun interspersing with fitful bursts of rain.

At 12:58, that cold front arrived with a volatile sky, another burst of rain, and a strong westerly gust of wind that set off a blizzard of leaves from the trees that still had foliage. The temperature plunged. I was sweating in my t-shirt a few minutes earlier. Now I was shivering.

There's probably no two months in Vermont with such opposing personalities as October and November.

October is a wild celebration of color and lingering warmth. November is somber and gray and quiet and dead as we button down for our traditional long, cold winter.

Of course, it's not like November is all doom and gloom. You can still  get some sort of decent days. In fact, there are signs an Indian Summer might sneak into Vermont next week.

Yesterday, I gave up at the client's house amid the rain and wind and chill.

I went home to St. Albans. The showers stopped. As strong west winds peeled the dead leaves from the poplar trees, I rushed to plant daffodil, hyacinth and crocus bulbs in my yard. You want to prepare for the joy of spring, because you know it will be a long, cold winter.  You want to spend the winter anticipating the joyful return to color and life.

Night fell. Now that the leaves are largely down, the view of northern New York State from my hillside property opened up, no longer blocked by foliage.

To the southwest, I could see the Lights of Dannamora in the distance, set against the Adirondack foothills, which all sounds so romantic. But Dannamora is a prison, and what we see is the big patch of lights that helps guards keep watch on the inmates.

After the freedom and joy of summer and autumn, we Vermonters - like me - are preparing for a sort of prison, too.

Our prison isn't necessarily grim, like Dannamora.  But the upcoming winter is a restrictive prison of wearing heavy coats, gingerly driving and walking on ice, and fretting about how we're going to pay the heating bill.

This jail sentence will last until April, when some of those crocuses and daffodils I planted as November loomed come back, to return color to our Vermont world.

Incredible Summer Heat Blasts Parts Of The U.S. In October

Summer in October, for sure!

After record heat in much of the nation this week
it'll cool down temporarily in the eastern half of the nation.
However, as this map shows, heat could build back
into the center of the nation around Oct. 20.  

That's certainly the case in the central and western parts of the country as incredible October heat has been cooking some areas long after the time when autumn chill usually takes hold.

Way up in Fargo, North Dakota, it was 97 degrees on Sunday, easily the hottest October day on record there. (the old record for October in Fargo was 93 degrees.)

Sunday was also the hottest day of all of 2015 in Fargo. The normal high temperature in Fargo this time of year is in the upper 50s.

Grand Island, Nebraska also had its hottest October day on record with 97 degrees. It was 98 degrees in Broken Bow and Norfolk, Nebraska and 97 degrees in Yankton, South Dakota.

International Falls, Minnesota, the "Icebox of the Nation" with its cold reputation, was 88 degrees on Sunday, tying it's record high for the month of October.

All these readings are way above normal for July, never mind October!

Many other record highs were set across the Plains Sunday, according to AccuWeather. 

Several cities that registered hottest for so late in the season records on Sunday also had their earliest 90 degree readings on record back on March 16 of this year, says The Weather Channel.

Talk about a never-ending summer!

Further west, it's hot in California, too. Los Angeles on Sunday completed its third consecutive day of temperatures above 100 degrees. It's the first time that's happened since 1989.

On Saturday, Camarillo, California reached 108 degrees, breaking its all time record high of 103 degrees set in September, 1978.

Big heat waves have hit California and the Great Plains in October from time to time at least since people started keeping records. But this one was way over the top compared to most past autumn warm spells.

I have to think climate change added a bit of a boost to what otherwise would have been a very hot weekend, but not the extreme we had this weekend.

In the Northwest and Northern Plains, strong winds accompanied the warmth in many areas. Winds gusted to 70 mph in Billings, Montana. Blowing dust and smoke from a grass fire cut visibility on an eastern Washington State highway, causing a multi-car pileup. 

The Northeast is only getting a glancing blow from the warmth today, with highs in the 70s well up into northern New England.

A change in the weather pattern to a more winter like one will bring much cooler temperatures to the central and eastern parts of the nation for the middle and end of the week. Snow might fall in places around the Great Lakes and northern New England by late in the week or the weekend.

The heat might build back into parts of the central United States next week. Alaska look to be unsually warm, too.

Meanwhile, the West Coast will stay hot. Bad news because of the ongoing drought and wildfire risk there.

New England: Did Someone Say Snow?

There might be some combined
autumn/winter scenes like this
 in New England in about a week.  

Despite a warm summer and early fall, some New Englanders are understandably touchy over the mention of snow, after the epic winter of 2014-15.

But snow is inevitable, and it's starting to be the season where it can get a little white out there.

That said, prepare for next weekend!  

It's already snowed in some corners of New England of course. Caribou, Maine has had a trace of snow in two of the past three days. The summits of northern New England mountains were white yesterday.

Plus, it does normally start to snow in the Northeast this time of year, at least occasionally.

Now, computer models are starting to focus on snow for much of New England next weekend and early next week.

Before you get too alarmed, we're not talking about any kind of blockbuster blizzard. It also won't snow everywhere in New England. Plus, forecasts can change and it might prove a little warmer than current forecasts.

As I see it now, though, there's the potential for several inches of snow in the upper elevations of northern New England, and flurries on valley floors in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and maybe western Massachusetts.

This could set us up for something really pretty. Foliage season is running late, thanks to a record warm early autumn. Snow and fall foliage can make for some pretty striking photographs.

Of course, you don't want too much snow. If you get many inches or feet of heavy wet snow with foliage still on trees, you get disasters that involve thousands of fallen and broken trees and power failures that last for weeks.

This happened famously in October 1987 in Vermont, New York and Massachusetts, and in much of southern New England, New York and New Jersey in October, 2011. 

Luckily, I'm so far not anticipating anything close to that extreme.

But this is the week to buy your winter boots, and consider getting those snow tires for your car. Even if the temperature does make it to 70 degrees on Monday ahead of the upcoming chill.

Worldwide Hot Times In October

Another record hot global month: October, 2014  

I could have just cut and pasted the blog post I wrote a month ago about September being the hottest such month on record.

Or, I could have just cut and pasted the blog post I wrote two months ago saying August was the hottest such month on record.

But, I won't take the lazy route to tell you that October was the hottest such month on record for the entire globe, according to NOAA's Climatic Data Center.

This year has really been on a hot streak, as May, June, August, September and October were all the hottest on record. Every month except February scored in the Top 10.

It looks like November, on a global basis, won't be the hottest on record, ending the current three month "winning streak," if you can call it that, but it still will be warmer than normal, the cold wave in the United States notwithstanding.

(The United States makes up only less than two percent of the Earth's surface so it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things when you're taking the globe's temperature.)

It now appears that chances are excellent that 2014 will be the hottest year on record for the Earth. So far, the top five hottest are, starting from hottest and going to fifth hottest are: 2010, 2005, 1998, 2013, 2003.

As I noted last month, much has been made of the apparent "pause" in global warming over the past decade. It wasn't really a pause, just a slow down in the rate at which things were warming up.

October adds a bit of evidence, along with the rest of this year, that the quote, unquote pause might be over.

New Scientist reported earlier this month that water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are spiking, which could signal the end of a phase in which much of the earth's increasing heat was being stored in the deep oceans, rather than land.

With surface temperatures of the oceans rising sharply, especially in the Pacific, that could mean some of the extra heat will be transferred to the atmosphere. That could mean 2015 will end up hotter than 2014, and we'll have many other hot years to come.

And, no, just because it was the teens this week in North Carolina and Buffalo got a zillion feet of snow this week, (or something like that) doesn't mean global warming is a crock.

Global warming doesn't pre-empt winter. And it doesn't prevent all big cold waves. In fact, global warming could be causing extremes in both directions. More hot spells, sure, but maybe a few intense cold spells as well as the jet stream goes haywire. 

October Was Warm In U.S. We're Still Waiting On Global Data

Most of the nation had a warm October. That's cold
comfort to us shivering through a November cold snap.  n

In the next week or so, we'll get data from such agencies as NOAA and the National Climate Data globe continued a record-setting trend in hot temperatures in October.
Center to see whether the

2014 might end up being the hottest year on record.

While we wait for that, and most of the nation shivers through an early season cold snap, we can at least look at the NCDC's review of October for the United States.

It turns out most of us enjoyed a warm autumn month.

For the United States, October was the fourth warmest in 120 years of record. The warmth was driven by the month being in the Top 10 warmest in much of the western United States, and most of New England. And New York State.

The Midwest continued to be the nation's ice box, as it has been all year. However, in October, temperatures there were near normal, not below normal as they've been during most of 2014.

Overall, precipitation for the United States was near normal, but nearly percent of the nation was still in drought. California's dire drought situation didn't get any better in October, I'm afraid.

With just two months of data to go, it looks like California will have its warmest year on record. Many western states will have one of its Top 10 warmest years on record.

By contrast, upper Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Illinois, are likely to have one of their Top 10 coldest years on record.

You can't read much into the global climate change situation by looking at United States data alone. The nation comprises maybe 2 percent of the world's surface.

We'll have to wait another few days to see how the entire planet did in terms of climate during October.

Feeling Chilled? Looking Back At A Warm Vermont October

Fall foliage near Bakersfield, Vermont
during a warm, slightly wet, but
beautiful October, 2014.  

I got distracted by that big cold, snowy nor'easter that hit New England over the weekend, and forgot to take a look back at October.

Here in Vermont, October gives us warm memories. Turns out that in Burlington, Vermont we had the fifth hottest October on record.

The mean temperature was 53.5 degrees or 5.4 degrees above normal. Six days made it over 70 degrees, and one day touched 80 degrees, which was a record high for the date on October 15.

Warm nights were a big feature in October. Ten nights never got below 50 degrees, and four nights in a row at mid-month never got below 60 degrees, which is extremely, extremely odd for Burlington in October.

The rest of Vermont was warm in October as well, Montpelier was 3.1 degrees milder than average, St. Johnsbury and Springfield were also more than three degrees on the plus side.

October in Vermont was also on the wet side, which is a good thing because it was starting to get awfully dry by the end of September.

Burlington had 4.17 inches of rain, which was more than a half inch wetter than normal. Most other areas of Vermont were between a half inch and an inch wetter than normal.

It's no longer very dry in Vermont, but we could still use some more soaking rains in November before the ground freezes. I hate to wish gloomy weather on people, but we could still use more precipitation.

Despite the October rains, we had a lot of sunny days, not all THAT much wind and no freezes of note. That kept the fall foliage on the trees for a longer time than I would have expected. It was one of the nicest foliage seasons I can remember.

So keep those warm, beautiful October memories with you as we enter the dark, cloudy dank, cold, windy and bleak months of November and December.