St. Albertans might have a hard time getting in the holiday spirit this month with unseasonably warm and dry conditions in the city.
So far this month, November is shaping up to be the fourth warmest since meteorologists have been keeping records, said Justin Shelley, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“We've seen daytime highs above zero every day so far this month, which isn't unheard of necessarily, but it's definitely unusual.”
As of Nov. 21 daytime highs had been above zero for every day of the month, Shelley said.
The average temperature for the month, until Nov. 21, was sitting at 1.9 C while typically the average temperature sits at – 4 C.
“If the month were to end right now… at this point it would make us the fourth warmest,” Shelley said.
Not only is it warm out, but there has been no official recorded precipitation at the Edmonton Blatchford weather station, although Shelley noted there had been some sprinkles of precipitation in the city that weren’t captured in the data. There is no weather station in St. Albert.
“We are very, very dry for the month of November,” Shelley said, adding the last time the region saw this little precipitation was in 1981 when there was only .4 mm officially recorded.
In the past few decades, about 15 to 20 mm of precipitation has been recorded in November.
Last year at around this time there was 15 cm of snow on the ground, Shelley said. November started off snowy in 2022 with five to 10 cm of snow on the ground at the beginning of the month.
All of this unseasonably warm and dry weather is due to El Nino, said Shelley, which caused September and October to be warmer than usual too.
Environment Canada will be releasing their long-term winter forecast in the next few.
