Chilly, Dry November In Vermont, But December Starting Warmer, Wetter

November was somewhat chilly and dry in Vermont with
plenty of showery or snow showery days with limited
sun, as this photo taken in St. Albans, Vermont
on November 19 hints at. Still this year is likely
to be among the warmest on record. 

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - I'm still here enjoying his gorgeous Scottish city, but also still keeping an eye on the weather back home in Vermont. 

Here in Edinburgh, it's quite cold and bright, unusual for this area. Temperatures never made it above freezing here yesterday, and the sky was sunny all (short) day.  

Hills outside of town are snow-covered, and some cars in downtown Edinburgh had snow on them yesterday. 

Normally daytime temperatures here in Edinburgh are in the low 40s.  Overcast skies are almost always a sure bet this time of year.  There's always a risk of seeing rain showers.  .

Which is what Burlington was like yesterday. I guess Vermont we swapped places with Scotland, in terms of weather. 

Looking back at the Vermont November, that month was also very much like early winter in Edinburgh. Video of the November weather moodiness is at the bottom of this post.  

November was a rare cool month in what has been a warm Vermont year. In most places around the Green Mountain State, it was about two degrees cooler than the "new" warmer climate change-driven average. November temperatures were close to average, or even a little above average, had this month happened half a century or so ago.

Still, in Burlington, November had its greatest departure below normal of any month this year - 2.1 degrees under the average of the years 1990 to 2020.

No days were super cold, though. By the end of November, it can often get into the single digits above or even below zero. But it never got below 18 degrees in Burlington during the month. Everyone else, except the coldest valleys also stayed in the teens or warmer all month.

We never got that warm during November in Vermont, either. The warmest day for most of us was in the low 60s. That's a far cry from the all time November highs we saw a year ago.  

November was on the dry side, too, with most of us running somewhere in the half inch or so shy of normal, give or take depending your location. Again, it was really nothing that out of the ordinary.

In fact, in a year that has brought Vermont some wild extremes, and some pretty big disaster, November, with one big exception was a pretty boring month in terms of weather.  I guess we needed the break.

That exception came on November 27, when unexpectedly heavy, wet snow cut power to around 34,000 homes and businesses. That was yet another big disaster of Vermont electric utilities that have suffered several such widespread outages in recent years. The same storm caused lots of travel trouble and highway crashes. 

Despite the relative chill of November, we are on track to have one of our warmest years on record, at least in Burlington,

If December turns out to be exactly average (remember, it's the new average that is warmer than in past decades) 2023 will end up being the second or third warmest year on record. Unless December is exceptionally cold, we'll easily have a top ten warmest year.

Remarkably, if this year ends up in the top 10 warmest list of years, it will be the fourth year in a row to make that rare list. Especially considering the Burlington records go back all the way to the 1880s. I wonder if there's something to this climate change thing everybody talks about?

As you can tell, December is off to a relatively warm start (In Vermont, not Edinburgh, obviously). As always, I don't generally trust long range forecast, but for the record, those longer range forecasts call for near to perhaps slightly warmer than average temperatures through mid-month. We shall see. 

Despite the relative chill here in Vermont, the world as a whole will probably have its warmest November on record. That would continue the trend we've seen for at least the past five months, as El Nino and climate change really turbo-charge global temperatures to new and dangerous heights. 

Video: The different cloudy moods of November in Vermont. Taken at various times in November, 2023 in northwestern Vermont. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.