The Start of Winter ~ WEATHER 101 with AL KAPRIELIAN

Welcome to November which marks the last month of hurricane season. The last day of hurricane season is November 30th. During November the days continue to get shorter and the nights longer. We will have to go through early sunsets. The sun angle continues to get lower in the sky.

As this occurs we will continue to see our daily high temperatures continuing to fall. Snow has occurred during the month of November. Time will tell if we see any snow this November. It is also possible to see warm weather during the month of November.

Temperatures in the 70s have occurred during the month of November. Boston even saw an 83 degree temperature on November 2, 1950. Recapping October we saw a very mild month. Temperatures averaged 7.5 degrees above normal for Boston in October.

The average temperature was 61.4 degrees. This ranks #2 for the warmest October on record. The #1 all time warmest October was 61.5 degrees in 1947. This October fell just short from being #1. For Manchester, New Hampshire the average temperatures for October was 59.6 degrees. This was 8.8 degrees above normal. The reason for the warm October was the upper level sub-tropical ridge of high pressure over the Atlantic Ocean. This high strengthened and expanded to the north/northwest along the east coast.

This upper level high pressure pushed the jet stream to our north. This put our region on the south side of the jet stream which is the warm side. This caused many days in October where the temperatures reached 70 degrees and higher. As a result it felt more like summer than fall. Besides the warm weather in October, the other weather feature was the big storm which occurred on Sunday evening October 29th into early Monday morning October 30th.

This storm produced a couple of inches of rain. The big issue with this storm was the strong damaging winds which knocked out the power in lots of towns. The power was out in many areas for a few to several days.

We saw winds over hurricane force with this storm. Hurricane force is 74 miles per hour. The winds gusted to 93 mile per hour at Mashpee on Cape Cod. Fairhaven MA saw a gust to 76 miles per hour. Wellfleet on Cape Cod had a gust to 72 miles per hour. Nantucket had a wind gust to 70 miles per hour. Duxbury MA had a wind gust to 80 miles per hour. These strong winds caused many trees and power lines to fall. The reason for the strong winds was a strong low level jet stream associated with the storm. In addition to the coastal low pressure system was tropical storm Philippe which merged with the coastal storm. This merging enhanced the strong winds. The only positive was the fact that these two storms which merged were progressive.

They moved through our region fairly quickly. This prevented us from getting a lot more rain than we got. It also prevented the strong winds from lasting for a longer period of time. There was a lot of energy/dynamics in the atmosphere to make this an intense storm. This is not a weather forecast; however, I feel we will see a lot more intense storms in the coming weeks and days. If strong low level jet streams continue to occur, this will cause more strong winds with future storms. As we move into the winter season, the jet stream is known to get stronger.

If you do not have a generator it may be a good idea to purchase one seeing all the power outages with the past storm. Remember when you run the generator it has to be located far away from your house outside!! After the big storm, we saw a period of more tranquil weather; enjoy it while it lasts. I have a feeling we will see more intense storms in the future.

Next month we will recap November weather and talk about winter storms. We will also recap this year’s hurricane season. In the meantime enjoy the rest of the fall season.