BTV October 2020 Recap

It has been a busy few days for me, and I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and recap the weather that we had this past October here in Vermont. As usual, I will focus on Burlington International Airport (BTV) in South Burlington, VT.

Temperatures

As has been the case for seemingly every month this year, temperatures were above normal this October. The month's average temperature was 50.1 °F, when normal is 48.1 °F, giving us a 2.0 °F departure from normal.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers/xmACIS)

And as the above figure shows, if we didn't have that colder stretch of weather to close out the month, temperatures would have likely been even more above normal. BTV reached its highest temperature of October on the 15th at 78 °F, while the month's low temperature occurred on Halloween at 20 °F. On 4 days, the temperature dipped below 32 °F.

Precipitation

It was a fairly normal month for precipitation, as we saw 3.43 inches of precipitation at BTV, when a normal year would have 3.60 inches.

(NOAA Regional Climate Centers/xmACIS)

The above accumulation graph shows that precipitation remained very consistent throughout the month, never rising or falling too much below the normal (brown) line. The rainiest 24 hour period occurred from October 15-16, when 0.77 inches of rain fell as a cold front moved through on the heels of the warmest day of the month (the 15th). 14 days had 0.01 inches or more of precipitation, 10 days had 0.10 inches or more, and 2 days saw greater than or equal to 0.50 inches of precipitation. It certainly felt like there were stretches when it rained almost every day this month. The National Weather Service WFO at BTV also reported our first traces of snow, on the 26th and 27th.

Interestingly, 2019 had the wettest October on record at BTV, and temperatures ran 4.0 °F above normal. There were 8.50 inches of total precipitation in October 2019, and on Halloween, a major storm moved through bringing 3.30 inches of rain.

Wrap up

October 2020 was a warm month with fairly normal precipitation at BTV.

The clocks have now shifted, the sun is setting before 5:00 pm, and we are in the swing of things in November. After a cool start to November, we'll see a big warmup for the next week or so. It'll be interesting to see what November 2020 has in store weather-wise.