Submitted by Bill Caulfeild-Browne
Only one month this year, July, has been below normal temperature – and then only by a fraction of a degree. October joined the procession of warmer months with a significant 3.6°C increase over the historical average of 9°C. This made it the warmest October I have recorded, and the second warmest ever recorded. You have go to back to 1920 when the mean was 12.9°C to find a higher temperature.
Tobermory was not alone in this relative “heat wave”. Most of Ontario saw much higher than usual temperatures with areas like Timmins and Moosonee setting records for the most consecutive days above 20°C – and a mean temperature of 5°C above the long-term average. In fact, the further north you went, the greater the anomaly. Imagine what this is doing to the permafrost in the Far North.
Precipitation was normal for the month at 89 mm. The most rain fell in storms on the 12th (14 mm) and the 20th/21st (29 mm.) The extreme rain that fell on Southern Ontario on the 25th (nearly 50 mm) missed the Northern Bruce – we only got 4 mm despite wind speeds that reached 52 km/hr. The windiest weather occurred on the 31st with gusts from the NNW hitting 68 km/hr.
Those winds ushered in much cooler weather, our first frost and first snowfall of the season. But even that didn’t last – as I write this on November 8th, it’s a sunny 13°C. We are truly experiencing climate change.
More on that next month.
