Submitted by Bill Caulfeild-Browne
With a mean temperature of 7.8C, October was slightly cooler than the norm of 9C. The month was marked by our first light frost on the 30th when the mercury dipped to -0.9C and this was followed by a heavier one, -2.5C, on the 31st. Our warmest day was the 12th with a high of 17.5C. Most of the first three weeks saw highs in the teens but on the 24th, gusty winds brought in a cold front that ended the double-digit temperatures.
That front was replete with thunderstorms that caused considerable damage in Grey and Simcoe counties, including a tornado that passed through Thornbury. We were lucky that the most violent weather passed to our south. We were even luckier not to be in Timmins where the temperature dropped to -19C, breaking a 70 year record!
Precipitation was about normal at 89 mm. Most of it arrived on the 7th, the 18th and the 21st. It was a windy month, though the highest gusts were only 61 kms/hr.
Because this edition of the Press won’t be published until nearly a month after the end of October, I will include some less-stale news in the form of some comments on November to date (the 11th). It has been a remarkable month so far.
We started out with frost on the 1st, followed by 12 mm. of rain. The 2nd was cold too with a high of only 7.8C. Then Mother Nature flipped on us. From the 4th on we got double-digit temperatures, both day and night. The coolest was 10.1C on the 6th and the warmest in Tobermory was 17.3 on the 9th. In Lion’s Head it reached 24C! Moreover, we got mostly dry sunny days. This is most unusual for November and records were broken all over Southern Ontario.
Today we’re returning to normal. A cold front moved in last night, bringing 10 mm. of rain and, as I write this, a temperature of just 6C which is normal for November. Even so, the mean for the month so far makes it a full 2C warmer than October. Of course there is usually reversion to the mean so no doubt things will cool off for the rest of the month. I’ll cover that in my next column.
