The average temperature last month was 14.4°C, making it the warmest October on record together with the same month in 2001.
Autumn officially started more than one month ago, but the season has hardly made itself felt in the air. The average temperature in October as measured in Uccle was 3.1°C warmer than the normal average temperature for this month (11.3°C), according to figures published by the Royal Meteorological Insitute (RMI) on Tuesday.
"With this average temperature, last October equalled the 2001 absolute record (taking into account measurements from 1833)," the monthly overview of the RMI read.
Mercury slowly rising
Even though the month started off relatively cold — at 12.4°C, the average temperature of the first 12 days was 0.5°C below normal — the mercury started rising from 13 October, and from then onwards, the difference with the normal average temperature only widened.
"After 15 days, the average temperature was 0.4°C higher than the respective normal value, after 20 days this difference was already 1.4°C and after 25 days, this figure reached 2.6°C," the RMI noted.
Tourists on Grand Place on a sunny day. Credit: The Brussels Times
In the third part of the month, between 21 and 31 October, the average temperature even reached an all-time record high since measurements began in 1892, at 16.4°C. The normal average temperature for the end of the month is 10.2°C.
On Saturday last week (29 October), the mercury shot up to 25.5°C, a new daily record for that day. A similar record was broken the previous day, which was the warmest 28 October since measurements began in Belgium in 1833.
The absolute record average maximum temperature for October was not broken and remains at 19°C, measured in 1921.
Decade-long trend
The average temperatures recorded in October have been increasing in the last decade. Over the past ten years, this figure reached 12.2°C, 3°C warmer than what was measured on average in Uccle in the 19th century, when the mercury reached an average of 9.2°C in October.
However, October is not exceptional in this way, as historical figures have shown. This is a trend that is being recorded across all seasons, with the average temperatures always exceeding those recorded in the previous century by 2°C to 3°C.
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Last month was also the third driest October of the current reference period, with a total of 40.7 mm of precipitation in Uccle (compared to the normal level of 97.8 mm). The record remains at 6 mm in 1995.
The sun shone for a total of 132 hours and 33 minutes in Uccle, 20 hours longer than the average of 112 hours and 38 minutes for this time of year.
