Edmonton sets modern-day record for number of 'warm' days

WxBlast: Oct. 18 One last "really warm" day Thursday. THEN…a gradual cooldown Fri/Sat/Sun and a MAJOR drop in temp for next week. More on that…some details on 20-degree days and frost-free fall stats… PLUS a Heritage Classic weather outlook. WxBlast video:

It's not an all-time record, but it IS a modern-day record.

The city of Edmonton hit 20 degrees for the 121st time on Thursday. That's only the third time in recorded history that the city has had 120+ days with afternoon highs in the 20s.

The records go back to the late 1800s and show that both 1897 & 1898 had 122 days of 20-degree temperatures. While there's some skepticism about the accuracy of those numbers (for a variety of reasons), there's nothing to disprove them. So, those years stand as the all-time record.

But, no year in modern history has had more 20-degree days than this year.

In fact, there are only TWO YEARS since 1900 with more than 115 days hitting 20 or warmer.

Last year was REALLY close to this year with 119 days. 1949 is next on the list with 114 days. The long-term annual average is for Edmonton to get 88 days of 20+ temperatures.

We've seen a pretty significant increase in the number of 20-degree days in recently. In the past ten years, we've averaged 105 days of 20+ daytime highs (up from that long-term average of 88 days).

From 1950-2014, only nine years had more than 100 days hitting 20 degrees.

However, seven of the past nine years have had 100+ days.