It’s been an unusual October, so unusual the weather people around town are calling it Augtober. That’s all expected to end as soon as tomorrow, with the arrival of multiple days of rain. But to get a sense of what this unusually hot October means I posed a few questions to the weather experts.
It’s been really hot this October? Is it a record?
“It’s not unprecedented to see temperatures getting into the 80s this time of year, but it has been getting into the 80s certainly more than we would expect. Eight-of-[the]-12 80-degree days this month were new records at PDX. This is certainly trending to be the hottest October on record. At this point, it will have been through the first 17 days.”
How about the lack of rain? Are we in record territory?"
Since Jan 1, we have had almost 24 inches of rain for the year; 23.91 to be exact. The normal value is 23.7, so we're pretty much right at or just slightly above normal still for participation for the year … If you recall, we did get a lot of rain in the spring and the early part of the summer.”
Should we attribute this to climate change?
"So through Oct. 16, this would be the fourth hottest year on record at PDX. And that's in terms of the average temperature. [That’s] trailing just 2015, 1992, and 2016, and running just ahead of last year.
"This is on pace to be our warmest October, and we've had certainly many temperature records, set recently in this year. I'm more involved in the day-to-day as a meteorologist, But, yeah, it certainly has been a hot couple of years up here."
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