11/11/1911 83of To 17of In One Day In The Midwest

[WhiteFox]

I've been in Chicago this week and watched a strong cold front heading south east across the US spawning some fairly rare strong tornadoes in Oklahoma and Texas. Rare for this time in November obviously as we all know Oklahoma is a little prone to tornadoes!

Anyway, this weeks cold front brought temperatures down from around 18oC to -4oC overnight Thursday with a high of 3oC on Thursday itself and some graupel. This is nothing compared to the cold front that hit on November 11th 1911. This was a historic front as Oklahoma City set its daily record for the date at 83oF (28oC). Just before midnight, a record low for the date was set at just 17oF (-8oC). I've witnessed 72oF (22oC) on one day in December in Chicago with 6 inches of snow on the ground two days later (the temperature stayed below freezing for ten days), and that was enough of a shock, but a 36oC plunge in around 8 hours must have been unbelievable!

Anyway, this link gives a brief rundown of the setup and mentions several tornadoes which occurred in the upper midwest, extremely rare for mid-November!

[AderynCoch]

Yes, this is quite a famous US weather event - the record daily high and daily low both recorded on the same date in Oklahoma City. Remarkable. It's not the same but in February this year Bartlesville, OK went from -28F (-33C) to 82F (28C) in the space of a week.

Nothing like this has ever occurred in Britain of course, but interestingly the record UK minimum for 30th November and record UK maximum for 1st December both happened in the same year (1985). The same applies respectively to 19th & 20th November (1947). In both cases, cold polar air was quickly replaced by mild air from the southwest.