November has two faces, meteorologically speaking. One is gloomy and grey: day after day of dull dismal skies, a thick mist obscuring the familiar horizons, the autumn leaves lying around, damp and inert. The other is fierce and threatening: wild windswept days, driving rain beating against the windows, the wind soughing in the trees, the dead leaves swirling vigorously or crackling drily underfoot. Both of these faces reveal important characteristics of November's personality, but there are one or two other traits as well.
Occasionally November surprises, and delivers us a spell of mellow autumn sunshine. Or a sudden surge of air from the Arctic sends us a succession of crisp sunny days with cloudless skies and sharp night frosts. Only rarely does November don winter garb and dump a foot of snow on our doorstep.
The following table shows the decade by decade changes in temperature, rainfall, sunshine, and thunderstorm frequency since 1890, which enables us to place recent fluctuations in November weather into some sort of historical context:
| Decade | Mean Temperature | Rainfall | Sunshine | Snow Falling |
| 1890-99 | 6.6°C | 86mm | 54 hours | 0.7 days |
| 1900-09 | 6.1°C | 76mm | 56 hours | 1.3 days |
| 1910-19 | 5.7°C | 92mm | 65 hours | 2.5 days |
| 1920-29 | 5.8°C | 97mm | 63 hours | 1.5 days |
| 1930-39 | 6.8°C | 103mm | 50 hours | 0.3 days |
| 1940-49 | 6.7°C | 97mm | 54 hours | 1.1 days |
| 1950-59 | 6.7°C | 100mm | 52 hours | 1.1 days |
| 1960-69 | 6.1°C | 98mm | 55 hours | 2.5 days |
| 1970-79 | 6.7°C | 98mm | 73 hours | 1.2 days |
| 1980-89 | 6.8°C | 88mm | 66 hours | 2.0 days |
| 1990-99 | 7.2°C | 96mm | 63 hours | 1.4 days |
November weather since 1890 averaged over England and Wales
November temperatures during the twentieth century reflect the erratic warming trend which is apparent in most of the months of the year. There was a hiccup in the 1960s when we experienced several decidedly cold and snowy Novembers thanks to a marked but temporary increase in the frequency of northerly winds; even so, the ‘60s were not as cold as the 1910s and ‘20s. The general upward trend appeared to accelerate in the 1990s which was by far the warmest decade in 340 years of records. The 1900-29 average of 5.9°C contrasts with a figure for 1990-99 of 6.9°C. This is the equivalent of a 12-day delay in the onset of winter.
November rainfall has been remarkably consistent since 1910, but the first decade of the century was much drier than any other. Unlike most other months of the year, there is no trend evident in the decade by decade averages.
In complete contrast the sunshine figures seem to be all over the place. There is a broad fluctuation from sunny Novembers in the 1910s and 1920s to dull months between the 1930s and early 1960s, then a marked improvement during the rest of the century. Broadly speaking, these wide variations reflect changes in the relative frequency of sunny northwesterly and northerly winds on the one hand, and gloomy southwesterlies and southerlies on the other.
The snowfall statistics are interesting. The snowiest decades were the cold ones of the 1910s and 1960s when northerly winds were most prevalent. But the warmer years since 1980 have produced a surprisingly large number of snowy days, which indicates that there continue to be occasional vigorous northerly outbreaks in November in spite of the underlying warming trend.
© Philip Eden