Vermont November Warm Spell To Be Among Strongest, Longest On Record

Warm winds blowing over the Adirondacks this week
helped create these sculpted clouds over South Burlington,
Vermont. Warm, dry weather is forecast to 
continue through Tuesday. 

 Last evening here in St. Albans, Vermont, armed with a head lamp due to the early sunsets this time of year, I went out into my property to do more autumn clean up.  

At 7 p.m., I'm out there in a t-shirt, and even with that on and no jacket, I worked up quite a sweat.  It was so warm and balmy we would have loved to have dinner out on the deck had we not already put away the outdoor furniture for the winter.

Pretty remarkable. And I'm loving it. 

This is very pleasant, to say the least, and it's going to go on for awhile yet.  

I checked back on past records from Burlington, Vermont, and this will be among the warmest and longest stretches of November Indian Summer in the books. 

We probably won't reach the all time high for the month of November, which was 75 degrees, last set in 1950. But it could come close and some daily high temperature records might be threatened between now and next Wednesday. 

For comparisons sake, here are the daily high temperatures in Burlington for the warmest November stretches I could find:

November 4-8, 1938: 62, 72, 66, 74, 70.

November 4-10 1948: 60, 68, 75, 58, 56, 58, 74

November 2-10, 1975: 62, 66, 64, 58, 59, 68, 71, 64, 64.

Now, let's compare that to the actual so far, and forecast highs in Burlington for:

November 5-11, 2020: 67, 69, 70, 68, 70, 70, 66

So yeah, this will easily be a top 5 most intense November "heat wave."

You don't need to prematurely more the loss of the upcoming winter. It can and indeed has gotten pretty cold after the past November warm spells.  In 1938, it was below zero by the 25th and 26th. The winter that followed the 1975 November warmth was quite cold and snowy. 

I can't tell what will happen after the end of the month.  At this point, it looks like it will turn somewhat cooler starting next Thursday, but there are few signs of very cold, wintry weather later in the month. Long range forecasts call for generally warmer than normal temperatures around here through around November 20.

This warm spell is also accompanied by a lack of rain, which is bad because there's a lingering drought and dry conditions in Vermont. We could have used a wet November.  It does appear things will get somewhat wetter starting the middle of next week, but it remains to be seen how much rain we actually get. 

At least it's not as bad as the Midwest. They've also had a record warm temperatures and very dry conditions so far this month.  Wildfires actually broke out yesterday in Minnesota and South Dakota, which is very odd in November for that part of the nation 

It is expected to rain and turn cooler out there over the next couple of days.