Posting up the monthly weather stats is becoming a rather depressing task this year. It looks as if even the little fellow in the photo above can’t stand any more. November continued the trend – broken only by July and August – towards the gloomiest year since we moved here in 1997.
Every month I post an update on how the weather has been in our corner of southwest France, based on the statistics my husband (the Statistics Freak or SF for short) has kept since 1998. To see the other weather posts, please click on ‘Weather’ under the Topics tab in the right-hand sidebar.
Weather assessment for November
A quick reminder of our subjective weather assessment: we assign each day a plus if it’s fine, a minus if it’s bad and a zero if it’s indifferent or we can’t decide. In November, we had:
Pluses – 5
Zeros – 11
Minuses – 14
The chart shows the percentage of plus days each November for the past 16 years (the line is the trend). This makes November 2013 the 2nd worst in that period.
To see if I was right about this year’s gloominess or if it was a figment of my imagination, I went back to all the charts for this year. Here’s what I found.
January – worst in 16 years
February – 5 were worse
March – 3 were worse
April – 1 was worse
May – worst
June – worst
July – best
August – only 3 were better, so in the top of the range
September – 1 was worse
October – 2 were worse
November – 1 was worse
I rest my case. Only July and August bucked the trend – and thank goodness they did.
Rainfall
It comes as no surprise, then, to know that it rained a lot in November – 174.5 mm against an average of 79.7 mm. It rained on 18 days as opposed to the average of 11 days. Only one month has had more rainfall since August 2004, when we started measuring it.
Total rainfall for the year to date is 1,018 mm, 34% above the average of 759.9. On the one hand, this is good since the aquifers must be replenished. On the other hand, the lack of sunshine doesn’t half make you feel miserable. I feel sorry for anyone who moved here this year, thinking that as it’s the south of France it must be sunny.
Frost nights
We had 7 frost nights in November.
December started cold but bright. Let’s see what the weather dictons (proverbs) have to say.
Brouillards d’octobre et pluvieux novembre (ou pluie de novembre), font bon décembre. Fog in October and rain in November make a good December.
Well, I don’t remember much fog in October but it was certainly a rainy November, so let’s hope this counts. And we’ve got Christmas to look forward to.
Copyright © 2013 Life on La Lune, all rights reserved
Life on La Lune 
Yes, it has been really miserable. Rain, rain and more rain here too. Mud everywhere. I suppose we have to get used to it the way the world is these days. Hope the dicton is right though.
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Yes, I’m keeping my fingers crossed about the dicton. The only plus point is that we needed the rain but we do seem to have had it all at once.
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I do like your weather posts:) However, I have to say that November seems to have been rather wonderful … no more rain than in Tuscany, but maybe it is a bit chillier here!
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Did you really think November was wonderful? Here? Perhaps it rains a lot in Tuscany in the autumn. This really was a gloomy November for here – and it’s a gloomy month by definition!
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