Is it normally this warm in November?
We’ve got through the start of term, Halloween and bonfire night – and the weather still doesn’t warrant a winter coat. Helen Coffey asks the experts why we’re continuing to sweat through autumn
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Your support makes all the difference.Remember, remember the fifth of November – but feel free to forget your coat. And your hat. And your gloves. (And, perhaps, the US election result.) Temperatures have remained a balmy 14 degrees across many parts of the UK this week.
And, while Brits often love to celebrate anything even vaguely resembling warm weather, at this time of year it doesn’t feel quite... right, somehow. We’re past the start of term, we’ve come through spooky season and out the other side, we’ve even crossed bonfire night off the list. Now, we’re staring straight down the barrel of the inexorable slide towards Christmas.
’Tis the season of smugly wholesome-looking women on Instagram celebrating the “cosy core” aesthetic: chunky knitwear and wool tights; artisanal blankets; homemade root vegetable stews with toasted pumpkin seeds; gargantuan-beyond-all-sense mugs of syrupy hot drinks crowned with cream. It should be a time of crisp leaves underfoot and crisp air all around; for seeing your breath turn to mist and whipping a jaunty scarf around your neck.
But it’s very hard to embrace the genuinely enticing bits of autumn when you arrive everywhere, as I currently do, red-faced and covered in a patina of sweat, fringe plastered unattractively to forehead.
It may not be a popular opinion, but I think I speak for all perpetually overheating cool-weather stans when I say: that’s enough now, thank you. The mercury needs to drop so that the balance of the universe is restored (and I can start wearing cable-knit sweaters again).
I’m not the only one feeling flushed. “I haven’t got my outer coats on yet in Lancashire and it’s November already,” tweeted one social media user. “People ask me if I miss Australian weather now I live in the UK and I’m like, ‘Nope, it’s too hot and getting hotter.’”
Another commented: “The kids are all playing out in shorts and T-shirts because it’s 15C on 1 November. We had colder days in the ‘summer’ holidays! Absolutely ridiculous weather right now.”
But is it really unseasonably warm this November? Or do we all just have short, defective memories?
Dr Simon Keeling, senior meteorologist at Weather Consultancy Services, says: “It’s not unusual to have mild weather at the beginning of November. As autumn transitions into winter we can often get spells of warm and cold weather. The problem is that when cold weather arrives, as it inevitably will, it often comes as quite a shock and we’re not prepared for it.”
The current temperatures we’re seeing are a good 10 degrees below the hottest November temperature on record, he adds; that was “22.4C on 1 November 2015 at Trawsgoed in Ceredigion”.
Jim Dale, senior meteorologist at British Weather Services, takes a slightly different view. “Where we are now, and have been for the past fortnight or so, hasn’t created a daily high temperature record as such, but with at least 10 or so days to go with the same synoptic profile, we are undoubtedly in a very unusual period,” he tells me. “The main aspect is the overnight temperatures. Despite high pressure ruling the roost, and with what would normally be an expectation of cold nights with frosts, as it almost always used to be, we are experiencing minimum temperatures far from any gloves and scarves values.” Well, that explains why I’m still sleeping in my summer PJs, then.
He points to the overall warming that we’re seeing with climate change: “It’s undoubtedly a sign of the times we are in, and the overall influences that the record warmth in the seas and oceans are having on our weather.” But, like Keeling, he warns that temperatures are likely to plummet soon, adding that “the weather models are certainly pointing in that direction”.
We are experiencing minimum temperatures far from any gloves and scarves values
One of the reasons we may all be so convinced that it’s “too warm” for this time of year is that average autumn temperatures have indeed risen compared to when we were younger. The past three autumns in the UK, from 2021 to 2023, have been three of the hottest on record. The mean temperature for September, October and November last year was 10.76C, according to Met Office data, making it the sixth-warmest autumn since records began in 1884.
“Overall, this has been another mild and wet autumn, and this is consistent with the ongoing pattern that is emerging as our climate continues to change,” Met Office senior scientist Mike Kendon said at the time.
The previous two autumns were even warmer, with 2022 seeing average temperatures of 11.05C and 2021 charting a mean of 10.84C. With an average temperature of 11.35C, 2006 boasted the warmest autumn ever on record; the six warmest autumns have, in fact, all occurred this century.
Meanwhile, average temperatures over the most recent decade (2009 to 2018) have been 0.3C warmer than the 1981-2010 period, and 0.9C warmer than 1961-1990. All of the top 10 warmest years in the UK have occurred since 2002; the 21st century has, so far, been warmer than the previous three centuries.
And we had best get used to this “new normal”. UK Climate Projections, which predicts the country’s future climate shifts and how we might need to adapt, projects an increased chance of warmer, wetter winters; hotter, drier summers; and “an increase in the frequency and intensity of extremes”. Modelling what could happen based on different levels of carbon emissions in the next 50 years, the latest report forecast that winter temperatures would rise by up to 3.8C by 2070 in the “high emission” scenario.
Sorry, autumn lovers – it looks like delayed cosy-fication (and sweating in November) may sadly remain the order of the day for the foreseeable.
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