WX-MAN's Musings

When it comes to weather this day is one of my favorites in history, and especially when I spent my time in Erie, PA, the daily record high in Erie is 71 and the record low is 18 and all of this happened in one day, November 12, 1911.

Now that I am living in Rochester, NY it doesn’t appear that Rochester had any records on this day back in 1911 but November, 13 the record low is 18 degrees back on 1911.

I also read this from the Buffalo NWS Forecast Discussion:

A NOTE IN HISTORY FOR NOVEMBER 12TH. IN 1911 A RECORD HIGH OF 69 FOR BUFFALO WAS SET JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT. A STRONG COLD FRONT MOVED THROUGH THAT DAY AND THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED 47 DEGREES TO A RECORD LOW OF 22 BY THE END OF THE DAY. THIS IS THE LARGEST CALENDAR DAY DROP IN TEMPERATURE FOR BUFFALO. BOTH OF THOSE RECORDS HAVE BEEN TIED SINCE THEN BUT NEVER BROKEN. IT IS THE ONLY DAY IN THE RECORD HISTORY FOR BUFFALO THAT BOTH A RECORD HIGH AND A RECORD LOW WERE SET ON THE SAME DAY.

Outside of the daily high and low, I could not find any other information on the type of weather Erie or Buffalo saw that day. Luckily this even took place over a large portion of the United States between November 11-12 1911.

On November 11, 1911 (remembered easily for now as 11/11/11), the afternoon temperature in Oklahoma City reached a record high for the date of 83, before plunging 66 degrees to a record low of 17 at midnight that evening. Both daily temperature records remain unbroken and untied 96 years later.

Record high and low temperatures occurring on the same day are rare, but they do happen. A search of local records from around the United States shows no less than 18 such pairs currently on the record books at various observing stations. Most of these stations have kept daily records for 50 years or more. The hard part, though, is not setting both records but keeping them without one or the other being broken in later years. In seven of the 18 known pairs of same-day records, one or the other of the two records has been tied (either before or since the day in question). Of the sets of same-day unbroken/untied records, none are more than seven years old. In this sense, the pair of daily records at Oklahoma City on 11/11/11 is unique because of the amazing length of time over which both the record high and low have survived. Which is the same case for 11/12/11 in Erie, PA. By comparison, the second-longest standing unbroken/untied record for high and low temperatures on the same day occurred on May 16, 1997, in Sioux City, Iowa, with a high of 91 and a low of 33.

It began with a Canadian high pressure system that began to build over Alberta as early as November 9. A low pressure system began to organize over the Rockies on the 10th and moved east into Iowa and Missouri on the 11th. Unseasonably warm air was drawn northward ahead of the low on the 11th, while in its wake, cold air plunged south across the entire central United States.

The unseasonably cold air eventually overspread the entire eastern United States as well, routinely dropping temperatures 30 to 70 degrees in a matter of hours. In Chicago, one man was overcome by heat and two others froze to death within a 24-hour period. Severe thunderstorms erupted from the mid-Mississippi valley into the Great Lakes, spawning destructive tornadoes in parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan that killed at least a dozen people. Strong winds behind the cold front reached 30 to 50 mph in many areas, with gusts over 70 mph in some locations. The high winds tore a barge from its towing ship off the New England coast. Fourteen crew members were given up as lost.

11 November 1911, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma : An arctic cold front, known as a Blue Norther, roars across the state. Temperature at Oklahoma City dives from a record high of 83°F (28.3°C) to an midnight low of 17°F (-8.3°C), also a record. By early morning on the 12th, the temperature had dropped to 14°F (-10°C) a drop of 69 F degrees (38.3 C deg) in less than 24 hours.

11 November 1911, Janesville, Wisconsin :The same intense winter storm spawns a tornado (later classified as F4 on the Fujita Scale) that strikes a community near Janesville. Within an hour of the tornado, the residents must deal with blizzard conditions and temperatures near 0°F (-18°C).

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