Last month was Colorado’s warmest November ever on record — breaking the previous record set in 1999.
The state’s climate center in Fort Collins said the main reason wasn't all the warm days, but the mild nights, which drove up the average temperature. Climatologist Becky Bolinger said what stands out for this November is not how many high temperatures Colorado saw but how few low temperatures there were.
November 2017 was record warm for 4 states and near average for 24 states: https://t.co/KdT0kzSUAd #StateOfClimate pic.twitter.com/qR4lxzoqfQ
“Our overnight and morning temperatures were much warmer than average,” Bolinger said. “This is the first time that Denver has not recorded a low temperature below 20 degrees in over 60 years.”
This November also broke more than 800 records. Records are being broken every month, according to Bolinger, but this high number is notable she said. Colorado’s average temperature for the month was just over 41 degrees, nearly 8 degrees above the state's average for the entire 20th Century.
The unusual weather can be expected to continue with the world’s climate consistently warming, Bolinger predicted. She said Colorado has seen a warming trend in recent years and said there’s a good chance next year will be similar.
“If I was a gambling person in Vegas I would gamble towards expecting that a warmer than average November is more likely,” in 2018 she said. “But it's definitely not out of the realm of possibilities that you could still have a cooler than average November.”
