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Warm November 2001

A look at the month ...

November 2001, brought record warmth to Minnesota. The average high in the Twin Cities was 46.4 degrees which is more typical of an average temperature for April. Even more unusal was the degree of warmth. Most cities had average temperatures over 10 degrees above normal. Many places in the region set all time monthly record highs for November. Some of these average temperature records were over 5 degrees warmer than the previous record. Some November temperatures can be found in the table below.

Location Average Temp. Depart. from Norm. Ranking Previous Record
Twin Cities 46.4 +13.2 1st 41.8 in 1999
St. Cloud 41.8 +12.8 1st 39.5 in 1899
Duluth 39.5 +11.1 2nd 40.5 in 1899*
Intl. Falls 36.9 +12.0 1st 34.9 in 1981
Rochester 45.4 +12.8 1st 40.9 in 1913
Fargo 39.8 +11.0 1st 37.9 in 1899
Sioux Falls 43.6 +10.6 1st 42.7 in 1999
* This reading was when the Duluth National Weather Service Office was located much closer to Lake Superior. November 2001 was warmest ever for Duluth's present-day airport location.

In the modern Twin Cities record, only three positive temperature departures have been larger than November 2001's value of +13.2:
March 1910 - +16.2 degrees
February 1931 - +16.1
January 1944 - +13.9

The November positive departure in the Twin Cities was the second largest in the modern record when normalized against monthly standard deviation. June of 1933 was 3.24 standard deviations away from the long-term mean, whereas November 2001 was 3.14 standard deviations from the mean.

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URL: http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/warm1101.htm
Last modified: December 7, 2001