Thanksgiving Day to Bring Feast from Mother Nature

We're on a Thanksgiving weather winning streak! Another pleasant Thanksgiving Day is shaping up to be mostly sunny and seasonably cool with afternoon high temperatures in the low-to-mid 50s. This will be the fourth dry Thanksgiving Day in the last five years. The only blemish during the streak happened two years ago when light rain fell on Thanksgiving Day, bringing four-hundredths of an inch of precipitation to the region.

Obviously, with the date of Thanksgiving fluctuating from year to year, the weather can be very different from one year to the next. We've experienced a record-breaking rainstorm, record-setting snowstorm, unseasonably mild temperatures, and strong, gusty winds over the last 25 years on Thanksgiving Day. However, the two most memorable storms happened in 2006 and 1989.

The most memorable Thanksgiving Day over the last 25 years occurred on November 23, 1989. That's when over a half-foot of snow fell across southwestern Connecticut, marking the snowiest Thanksgiving on record in these parts. In fact, the snow began falling the night before, creating a nightmare at airports, bus depots, and roadways on the heaviest travel day of the year.

Officially, 6.2 inches of snow fell at Sikorsky Memorial Airport. Coupled with the nearly half-inch that fell the night before, just about seven inches of snow blanketed the region. It was the snowiest November day on record until this month's Nor'easter brought 8.3 inches of snow to the region. Remember, the average snowfall for the entire month based on 40 years of climatology is less than an inch (0.7").

Seventeen years later to the exact day, nearly two inches of rain (1.84") fell during Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2006, with most of it coming during the mid-to-late morning hours. That's over half the normal average rain for the entire month. I was the emcee at Fairfield Warde High School's halftime ceremony during the Mustangs' football game against arch-rival Fairfield Ludlowe. The gala event included the field dedication ceremony and 50th anniversary celebration of the opening of the school.

If you're counting, 11 of the last 24 Thanksgivings have produced measured rain locally, including a streak of four in a row from 2004 through 2007. The longest dry stretch was four years, from 2000 through 2003. Nearly an inch of rain fell on Thanksgiving Day 1998, and just about a half-inch was recorded the following year in 1999. Just a trace of rain fell three years ago, November 26, 2009.



In fact, over the last 50 years, the numbers are strikingly similar. Measured rain has been recorded 24 times on Thanksgiving Day, or just about 50 percent of the time. As for the warmest Thanksgiving Day in recent memory, the mercury climbed to 69 degrees at Central Park in New York City on November 29, 1990, establishing a record high for the date. The coldest Thanksgiving morning in the last 20 years happened on November 28, 1996, when the temperature fell to 23 degrees.

Paul