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REGIONAL— It wasn’t just your imagination. This past November was not just mild, it was the warmest month of November ever recorded in much of northeastern Minnesota. Even for International …
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REGIONAL— It wasn’t just your imagination. This past November was not just mild, it was the warmest month of November ever recorded in much of northeastern Minnesota. Even for International Falls, the region’s longest-reporting station, November 2016 averaged 37.2 degrees, a monthly average more typical of October than November. That beat out the previous record of 36.9 degrees, set in 2001.
“That was consistent throughout the whole state,” said State Climatologist Pete Boulay. Not every station set a new all-time record, but those that failed to do so didn’t miss by much. The Twin Cities recorded their second warmest November in more than 150 years of recordkeeping.
It was the same story across northeastern Minnesota, where most stations recorded November temperatures ranging from 10 to 12 degrees above normal. That’s a whopping departure for a monthly average, noted Boulay. Weather stations like Cook and Ely also appear to have set all-time records, although few stations in the area have the 88-years of weather records available at I-Falls. But 2001 appears to be the year to beat in most cases, and a number of stations easily topped their temperature records from that year. A Cook area station beat its 2001 record by half a degree, averaging 38.0 degrees for the month. Ely beat its November 2001 monthly average, of 36.7 degrees, by a whopping 1.1 degrees, recording a monthly average this year of 37.8 degrees.
It wasn’t the warmest November everywhere in the region, however. The Hibbing-Chisholm airport averaged 34.9 degrees this November, nearly a full degree cooler than the 2001 average of 35.8 degrees. But that was still a full nine degrees above the typical November average of 25.9 degrees.
It’s all added up to a very slow start to winter, despite the major snowstorm that hit much of the region on Nov. 18. That brought more seasonal temperatures for a couple days, but the return of milder conditions and rain melted much of the snow.
That means at a time when the ice fishing season is typically well underway, major lakes across the area remain wide open, and are still drawing open water anglers. “When we get a nice day, we’ll go out,” said Kathy Kladivo, who operates Shamrock Marina with her husband Randy. “It’s been good.”
While open water on Dec. 1 isn’t unprecedented, particularly in recent years, it’s still unusual. The colder temperatures in the wake of the Nov. 18 storm did form skim ice on many smaller lakes and bays, but the mild conditions since then have reopened many of those lakes.
Some ice is likely to return over the next few days as temperatures have returned to more seasonal norms this week. Next week’s forecast calls for temperatures well zero, which should bring a certain end to the open water season.
The average high for this time of year in northern St. Louis County is 23 degrees, with an average low of minus 2.