Waterloo Region had its driest October in over 20 years

It was an extra warm and especially dry October in Waterloo Region.

Those are the takeaways from the month’s weather statistics summary from the University of Waterloo’s E.D. Soulis Memorial Weather Station.

The data shows October had average daily high temperatures of more than 3 C above average, the second warmest October trend in the last ten years. Due to many nights of clear skies, daily lows were 0.7 C below average, balancing out the overall heat for the month.

Even so, between the warm days and cool nights, the average daily temps were 1.2 C above normal.

But then came a warm streak at the end of the month, peaking with 25 C days. The highest temperature last month was 26.0 C, the lowest was -2.8 C.

The average daily high came in at 17.3 C, and the average daily low at 3.9 C.

All those clear skies meant it was a dry October as well, and the Soulis station reports that if it weren’t for a storm just a few days before the end of the month, it would have been the driest October on record.

Even though that late-month storm brought the October total to 29.8 millimetres of rain in Waterloo Region, the monthly average is 81.0 mm, and it was still the driest October in more than 20 years.

But combining the low-rain totals for both October and September, it shows the second driest spell for those two months since records began back in 1914.