Saturday was Montreal's hottest November day on record

INA-  SOURCES 

Montrealers flocked to Mount Royal and other parks and waterfronts to enjoy temperatures topping 24 degrees Saturday — the warmest November day ever recorded in the city.

We’ve just beaten the November record,” Environment Canada meteorologist Dominic Martel told the Montreal Gazette on Saturday afternoon, noting the mercury hit 24.3 at Trudeau International Airport between 2 and 3 p.m.

The previous record high in Montreal for the month of November of 22.4 degrees was on Nov. 10, 2020. The all-time record for that specific day — Nov. 5 — was previously 21.1 degrees in 1938.

This follows some weirdly warm weather in October, with 19 days warmer than the average of 8.5 degrees and eight days where temperatures rose above 20 degrees. Normally, this happens on only three days, Martel said.

“In Montreal, we were close to two degrees above normal mean temperature for October. It was quite high and the amount of precipitation was 44 per cent of what we usually get in October,” he said, noting Montreal got 40 millimetres of rain in October, while the average is 91 mm. “So it was a lot sunnier than it normally is and quite a bit hotter.”

Because Environment Canada only has data from the past 100 years or so, it is not possible to say how much of the temperature increase is because of climate change, he said.
“Ideally, we would need to look at 1,000-year trends to say what is attributable to normal variations and what is attributable to climate change, for sure,” he said. “But a lot of records have been broken in the last 20 years, so we do see a tendency” that jibes with what climate scientists have been predicting would happen with increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Quebec saw a five-day autumnal heat wave from Oct. 22 to 27, with places like Schefferville experiencing temperatures that were almost 18 degrees above normal on Oct. 26, and St-Anicet in southern Quebec hit 26.3 degrees that same day.

While it was warmer than average, it was not a record-breaking October, Martel said. In October 2017, the average temperature was 13.1 degrees, about 4.5 degrees hotter than the 30-year average of 8.5 degrees. This past October, meanwhile, was only 1.9 degrees above average in Montreal.

But some places in eastern Quebec saw much warmer temperatures than they are used to in October, such as Gaspé, where the average temperature in October was 3.2 degrees above their normal of 5.6 degrees, and Mont-Joli, near Rimouski, which saw temperatures 4 degrees above their average of 5.8.
There has been no snowfall yet this fall and temperatures went below zero only twice in October — on Oct. 28 and 29.

“It’s not uncommon, for sure, to have snow before Halloween, but in fact we had a high of 15.4 on Halloween in Montreal this year, and in the evening it was close to 11, so that was a lot better than zero, when kids have to wear coats under their costumes.”

That mild Halloween weather was likely appreciated by Montrealers in particular, since Halloween has been touch-and-go in the city these last three years. In 2019, Halloween was marred by predictions of a dangerous wind storm that prompted Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to suggest parents hold off on taking their kids out trick-or-treating until the following evening. But the expected 100 km/h winds actually arrived a day later than expected, effectively cancelling Halloween for many that year. And the COVID-19 pandemic managed to dampen Halloween fun in 2020 and 2021.

Martel said showers are expected Sunday and temperatures should return to normal for this time of year on Tuesday, with highs of around 10 degrees. Temperatures should stay in the normal range for a few days, with a drop expected after Nov. 12 or 13, bringing the possibility of snow, he said.

source: MONTERIAL GAZETTE