Vermont November Was Warm, Wet And Weird

Strong storms erupted over northwestern Vermont on 
November 6, the same day an all time record high for 
the month of November was set in Burlington. November
was an odd month, for sure. 

 Another warm Vermont  is in the books as November came to a close yesterday. 

Many months in 2022 across Vermont were pretty mellow, with not a lot of extremes. November certainly wasn't one of those months. 

The first part of November saw all time record highs for the month. This was followed by a long stretch of colder than average weather. Then the month finished up with some yo-yo temperatures, and a fair amount of wind. 

Overall, the average temperature for November in Burlington worked out to 43.5 degrees. That tied with 2015 as the second warmest November on record. (The warmest November was in 1948, with a mean temperature of 44.4 degrees).

With that burst of unseasonable heat at the start of the month worked in, all of Vermont was quite a bit warmer than average for the month.  Montpelier, with a mean temperature of 40.9 degrees, was a pretty whopping 6.5 degrees on the warm side. 

Most other places, including St. Johnsbury and Bennington, were nearly 4 degrees on the warm side. 

November, 2022 was on the wet side, too.  That's a good thing. Ground water is now charged up and robust as we head into the winter. That's great for ski areas, who will need water for snow making. And it will prevent wells from going dry over the winter.  Plus, we'll be set up for decent moisture in the spring, unless of course winter turns out to be extraordinarily dry. 

Rainfall wasn't extreme, but the 3.6 inches that fell on Burlington was a good three quarters of an inch above normal.  Far northwestern Vermont was even wetter, thanks to two very wet storms at the beginning and middle of the month. 

Most other stations in Vermont were very roughly a half inch or so wetter than average. 

It was a warm month, so snowfall was understandably on the light side. The three inches Burlington reported came all in one day, and was 2.7 inches below normal for November. 

The extremes at the start of the month were wild to say the least. 

On November 6, Burlington reached 76 degrees, setting a new all-time record high for the entire month of November. Lebanon, New Hampshire, a good proxy for White River Junction, hit 78 degrees. So did Springfield, Vermont.  It was 75 in Bennington. Montpelier, Rutland and St. Johnsbury all topped out at 74 degrees. 

The glow of a mild sunset in my yard in St. Albans, 
Vermont on November 26.  November, and autumn,
2022 as a whole were in the top 10 warmest list 

I don't believe Vermont set a statewide record in November. That honor still goes to the 81 degrees in Bellows Falls in 1950.

Even more impressive were some of the overnight "lows" in early November. The low temperature in Burlington on November 6 was 62 degrees. That's the warmest "low" on record for Burlington. It also is just about a normal low for mid-July. 

The November 6 warmth also triggered several lines of rather strong thunderstorms mostly in northwestern Vermont. This, of course is highly unusual for November, but there you go. 

Another spell of record warmth kept temperatures near 70 degrees in the pre-dawn hours of November 12.

After that, things abruptly flipped.  For a time in mid-November, about 98 percent of the Lower 48 was colder than normal.  That's very much an unusually large amount of real estate to be colder than average.

Here in Vermont, the heat of early November was eroded by eleven consecutive days of colder than  normal weather. This chilly spell wasn't extreme by any means, and no record lows were threatened. But it was a reminder that winter is on the way. 

The closing week of the month was all over the place, as we had an active weather pattern than flung a series of warm and cold fronts through the North Country. 

Overall, east of the Mississippi Valley, November in the United States was warmer than average, with several cities, especially in the Northeast and in Florida, having top ten warmest Novembers.

West of the Mississippi was cold, with cities reporting having among the top ten coldest Novembers in 2022. So yeah, it was a month of extremes. 

WARM AUTUMN, BUT....

Meteorological autumn ran from September 1 to November 30.   Climatologists break up the seasons that way basically for ease of record keeping.

With November's numbers now in, Burlington had its fifth warmest meteorological autumn with a mean temperature of 52.6. Remarkably, seven of the top 10 warmest autumns have occurred since 2011. That is one incredible autumn warming trend in the past decade or so.

Meteorological winter, at least the beginning of it, might not be so abnormally warm. Although the first few days of December might be a little on the warm side, the same is not really in the cards for the rest of the month. At least if long range forecasts are to be believed. 

A pattern known as the "Greenland Block" seems to be setting up. That means a huge high pressure system sets up over and near Greenland.

This, in turn squashes the jet stream over North America southward.  When that happens, the door is wide open for cold Canadian air to sink into much of the United States, including New England.

Sometimes, but not always, this pattern can also be stormy for New England. The devil is in the details, so we don't know how cold or how stormy the middle two weeks of December turn out. But at the moment, odds are favoring a December that's on the chilly side.