It was all contrasts, last month.
It was cooler than average, but the sea was warmer, humidity was so high that there was fog, cutting visibility on one day to less than 100m, and there was also a higher than average rainfall. Thunderstorms were more frequent than normal too.
The Meteorological Office said that with an average maximum temperature of 24.2°C, October days were 1 degree Celsius colder than the recorded average during the past 20 years. The lowest day maximum temperature occurred on the 22nd when the temperature at Malta International Airport dropped to 18.2°C. The highest maximum temperature recorded was 27.9oC, which is 1.4oC lower than the average maximum for the last 20 years.
The lowest minimum temperature last month was 10.8oC recorded on the
22nd day. This is lower than the 20-year average by 3.3oC. The lowest ever recorder October minimum temperature in Malta was on 30 October, 1978, when the temperature fell to 8.0oC.
The sea temperature was 0.25oC warmer than the average of the month recorded during the last 20 years.
The monthly average humidity reached 90 per cent. Maximum humidity of 99 per cent was recorded on the 25th, 26th, 27th and 29th October. This phenomenon enhanced the occurrence of fog events that happened on the 26th and 27th, and which characterised last month as having an above October average of fog events during the last 20 years. These conditions caused the visibility to drop to less than 100m on the 26th which slightly improved on the following day.
A total of 93.2 mm of rain fell last month at Luqa Airport, which is more than the average rainfall in October since 1921 of 87.2 mm. The wettest day last month was the 21st with 31.6 mm. The occurrence of hail was recorded on the 22nd. The wettest October on record was that of 1951 with 476.5 mm and the driest was that of 1923 with 1 mm of rain.
Last month there were seven days with thunderstorms, two days more that the average number of thunderstorm events experienced during the month of October for the past 20 years. The stormiest October was that of 1962 with 12 thunderstorm days.
The wind at Malta International Airport last month had an average speed of 7.8 knots and with 72 per cent of the time within the light wind speed bracket (1 to 10 knots) bracket. The most frequent direction was the West Northwest and the strongest gust was 45 knots from a West by North direction on the 22nd of the month. The strongest gust at Malta International Airport ever recorded was 72 knots (83 mph or 133 kilometres per hour) from the Northwest on 11 October, 1981.