U.S. Had Near Average Temperatures In November, But Only If You Mix Extreme Heat, Cold

If you average out the Lower 48 temperatures as a whole
it was near average. But a very warm east and a very 
cold west canceled each other out. 

 It's always interesting to peruse climatological data for recent months, be it local, the United States and the world.

We've already explored in a previous post how Vermont did with November weather (warm and wet).  Now we have data for the United States as a whole.

The U.S. November average temperature was 41 degrees, or 0.7 degrees on the cool side. This puts November, 2022 in the middle third of the November records. In other words, it was not particularly hot, or particularly cold.

Except.

Averaging everything out glosses over the extremes the U.S. saw in November.

As NOAA announced on Friday:

"Maine saw its fifth warmest November on record. Florida saw its seventh warmest, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont experienced their top 10 warmest Novembers on record.

Temperatures were below average across much of the West - Idaho ranked fourth coldest, Washington ranked sixth and Oregon ranked seventh - while California and Nevada had their top 10 coldest Novembers on record."

The U.S. saw a pretty clean dividing line between warm in the east and cold in the west. 

Rainfall was a different story, as it often is. Looking at a map of where precipitation was above or below normal, it's pretty splotchy.  I guess the driest areas relative to average were in the Southwest and central Plains. The wettest areas, again relative to average, were in parts of the Southeast and western Great Lakes.

The more interesting data is due later this week. We'll learn how November fared globally compared to other years. Early indications are it will be about the eighth or ninth warmest, but we can't be sure yet until we see the real data. I'll post about it when the report comes out in a few days.