Very mild start to November

The first part of November has been very mild, dry and quite sunny across the UK, according to provisional Met Office climate figures.

The UK average temperature for 1-15 November was 9.4 °C, which is 3.5 °C higher than the long term average. The warmest district of the UK so far this month has been East Anglia where the average temperature was 11.2 °C, some 4.5 °C above the long term average for the area.

We would normally expect the first half of November to be warmer than the second as we transition towards winter (which, meteorologically speaking, starts in December). However, even bearing this in mind, the temperatures seen in the first half of this month have been much warmer than normal.

Rainfall amounts have been well below normal across the UK for the first half of the month. The UK has seen 25.6mm of rain so far which is well below the level you would expect at the mid point of the month.  Northern Scotland has seen the driest weather with just 10.9mm of rain being recorded, a mere 6% of the monthly average.

Rainfall 1-15 November 2011

As you might expect from the low rainfall amounts we have also seen a fair amount of sunshine during the first half of the month. The UK has seen 61% of average for the month with 35.9 hours and Northern Ireland has seen a full months worth of sunshine in the first 15 days with 55.4 hours.

	Average temperature		Sunshine hours		Rainfall
Location	1-15 Nov 2011	Difference from 71-00 monthly average	1-15 Nov 2011	Percentage of 71-00 monthly average	1-15 Nov 2011	Percentage of 71-00 monthly average
UK	9.4 °C	3.5°C	35.9	61 %	25.6 mm	22 %
England	10.2 °C	3.8 °C	29.2	45 %	26.9 mm	32 %
Wales	9.5 °C	3.0 °C	43.5	75 %	36.3 mm	23 %
Scotland	8.1 °C	3.4 °C	41.3	86 %	20.3 mm	12 %
Northern Ireland	9.0 °C	2.9 °C	55.4	100 %	27.7 mm	25 %

For the UK, the warmest November on record was 1994 with an average temperature of 8.8C; and the driest was in 1945 when 22.1 mm fell.

However, with more than two weeks of weather still to come and temperatures expected to return to more normal levels before the month is out, it’s too early to say where this November will sit in the record books.