Strong south winds ushered in warmer than expected temperatures today, with highs in the lower to middle 60s.  Here’s a look at highs across southern Wisconsin this afternoon:

Prairie du Chien: 67
Monroe: 66
Mineral Point: 65
Fort McCoy: 64
Janesville: 64
Lone Rock: 64
Madison: 63
Watertown: 63
Baraboo: 63
Milwaukee: 57

We will see more of the same this weekend, with sunshine and middle 60s on Saturday (incredible for the last outdoor Farmer’s Market downtown!) and more clouds than sun and lower 60s on Sunday.  These readings are about 15 degrees above average, so if you don’t already have outdoor plans, make some! 

If you’re curious about conditions for the Badgers in Bloomington, Indiana tomorrow, conditions will be just about as nice, with upper 50s at the (11 o’clock) start of the game and middle 60s by the end.  But it will be breezy, with southwest winds at 10 to 15 miles an hour.  For the Packers in Tampa Bay on Sunday,  no surprise it will be quite warm, with partly sunny skies and readings in the middle 80s.

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The weather pattern has changed for the better from October to November. October featured colder than normal temperatures almost every day. Contrast that to my seven day forecast. The normal high is steadily dropping about one degree every two days. In the next 7 days it will drop from 49 degrees to 45 degrees. Contrast these normal high temperatures to my seven day forecast, where highs are forecast to range from 52 degrees to 63 degrees. It looks like it will be warm enough to golf, which I plan to do this weekend. Anytime you can golf in November is a bonus!

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If you’ve been hoping for some warmer weather, this is the weekend for you! Highs will climb a good 10 to 15 degrees above average on Saturday and Sunday, making for great conditions outdoors! It will be windy on Friday and still a bit breezy early Saturday, with southwest winds around 10 miles an hour, but the wind will diminish out of the west Saturday afternoon. So if you will be watching one of the many high school football games taking place on Saturday, the weather will be quite nice with sunshine and highs in the lower to middle 60s! Sunday will be very nice, too, with partly sunny skies and highs near 60. This weekend will be perfect for any outdoor activity, maybe one last golf game…with relatively light winds, it will be a good time to perhaps finish raking the leaves, which is at least one thing I plan to do. Hope you have a GREAT weekend, whatever you decide to do!

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While it has been dry lately (with only 0.02 inches of rain through the first five days of November) and looks to remain quite dry over the next week, we still have a precipitation surplus. So far this year, we’ve had 33.85 inches of precipitation. This is 4.50 inches above the average of 29.35 inches. The average precipitation for the entire year is 32.92 inches, so we’ve already surpassed that amount by 0.93 of an inch.

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Today was a fairly typical early November day, with mainly cloudy skies and highs in the 40s. Temperatures held in the upper 30s for most early on, with a low of 37 in Madison. But with a little bit of sunshine in the morning, highs managed to reach the upper 40s, with a high of 48 in the Capitol City. 50 and 32 degrees are average for November 4th.

Temperatures can still be “all over the place” in terms of records, with today’s record high of 72 set just one year ago. The record low, though, is on the opposite end of the spectrum, a very cold 8 degrees set back in 1951. As for precipitation, 1.61 inches of rain is the highest rainfall total for today’s date, recorded in 2003. And today’s snowfall record is 0.7 inches set all the way back in 1884.

On a side note, did you hear the sirens at noontime today? Don’t forget, the tornado sirens are tested at noon every first Wednesday of the month, which was today!

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Yesterday’s high was 45 dgrees, & our forecast high for today is also 45. We’re really going to be warming up though, with our Saturday & Monday morning LOWS also forecasted to be 45 degrees!  Get ready for a GREAT weekend, with highs topping out in the low 60s.

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I wrote a blog last week on how your perspective changes when the weather gets colder. (or warmer) Case in point, the last couple of days. We reached the middle 50s yesterday, (on Monday) and the sunshine was nice, but north to northwest winds around 15 miles an hour (in the afternoon) made it feel quite chilly out. On the flip-side, we again have sunshine today, but there’s little to no wind. (with winds 5 miles an hour or less) So how warm do you think the temperature is? Would you believe just 44 degrees as of 3 p.m.? I think you’d agree that today’s 44 feels better than yesterday’s 54. Imagine how nice sunshine, lower 60s and relatively light winds (at least in the afternoon) will feel this upcoming Saturday!

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No surprise to those of you who keep up with the weather…October turned out to be cooler and wetter than normal.  The average high in Madison was 52.5 degrees, with an average low of 38.4.  The average monthly temperature was 45.4 degrees, which was almost 4 degrees below normal.  The highest temperature recorded all month long was just 70 degrees on October 21st.  26 degrees was the coldest overnight low, which occurred on the 11th. 

We had a lot of clouds and showers in October, totaling 3.80 inches of rain, which was 1.62 inches above average.  The greatest 24-hour rainfall total was 1.04 inches, which occurred on the 22nd and 23rd.  We even saw a few flakes of snow in October, which fell during the morning hours of Saturday, October 10th.

So while it was quite active in October, that will not be the case for the first week of November.  Other than a few showers later Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, the forecast is dry.  It will be chilly through midweek, but temperatures will rebound by the upcoming weekend, with highs back into the 60s!

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Temperatures really start to tumble this month. The average high drops from 51 degrees on the 1st to 36 by the 30th. Likewise, our average lows drop from 33 to 22. The average precipitation for November is 2.31 inches, our 7th wettest (or 6th driest) month. And, on average, we start to see more snow this month. It’s typical to see 4.7 inches during November.

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Rainy days have occurred frequently in October. A trace or more of rain was recorded on 20 days! Compare this total to September, when rain fell only on six days. We went from a very dry late August and most of September when no rain fall for three consecutive weeks to a rainy pattern over the past 5 weeks. Total rainfall is well above normal for the month. In Madison there has been 3.8 inches of rain in October, which is 1.7 inches above normal. It looks like we’re finally breaking out of this wet weather pattern. Aside from a chance of a few showers Sunday night, I have the forecast dry for the next 7 days. This is good news for area farmers, who have had a difficult time drying out the corn crop for harvest.

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