Burrr! Likely coldest-ever November 22nd Thanksgiving Day for Cleveland

With Thanksgiving Day a little more than 24 hours away, Northeast Ohioans looking to celebrate may have to do so cold turkey.

The forecast for the day is a wishbone-chilly 28 degrees for a high with Wednesday night’s projected low at a feather-ruffling 20 degrees. By all accounts it is expected to be one of the coldest Thanksgiving Days on record, and the coldest by far for a Thanksgiving Day falling on a November 22^nd.

If that be the case, let’s look at that record as compiled by the National Weather Service. Of course, honoring Thanksgiving Day is something similar to hitting a moving target: the event is not celebrated on the same date the way New Years, July 4th or Christmas are commemorated.

Thanksgiving is locked in the last Thursday in November. Thus, the earliest Thanksgiving can be anchored is November 20^th and the latest is November 30^th. That is a huge date swing at a time of year when both temperature and participation are meteorically highly variable.

In looking back through the Weather Service’s record books we see that since 1887, Thanksgiving Day has fallen on November 22^nd a total of 11 times, the last one occurring in 2013. On those 11 instances the coldest was in 1956 with a low temperature of 17 degrees and a high of 31 degrees.

So if the high does climb only to the projected 28 degree it will become the coldest November 22^nd Thanksgiving Day on record.

For November 22^nd, the normal (average) high is 48 degrees while the normal (average) low for the date is 35 degrees. The date’s record high was the 73 degrees checked off in 1934 with the date’s record low being the zero degrees, marked in 1880. (Yes, there is a difference between record highs-lows and statistics compiled for holidays).

Oh, the warmest Thanksgiving for the November 22^nd date was the 61 degrees which was recorded in 2012.

We also see that of the 11 November 22^nd Thanksgiving Days currently on the books, snow has fallen only twice though precipitation has arrived in one form or other six times.

Just for more Thanksgiving Day weather trivia, the warmest ever for the holiday was 70 degrees, which was recorded November 26^th, 1896. The coldest ever Thanksgiving Day was 7 degrees, which happened November 27^th 1930.

Also, the snowiest-ever Thanksgiving as recorded for Cleveland was the 0.9 inches that fell November 27^th, 2014.

Since 1887, precipitation in one form or another has fallen 81 times on Thanksgiving Day, or 62 percent of the time.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net