There is no doubt that October was cold, but the numbers confirm what a number of people suspected. October 2009 is now the coldest October on record. The average temperature for October is 59.2° while in 2009 we only managed a meager average of 49.7°. This number breaks our previous October record of 51.5° set back in 2002.

Here is how it breaks down for Lawrence:
Average high for October 2009: 59.3°
Average low for October 2009: 42.1°
Normal average high for October: 70.1°
Normal average low for October: 48.3°

As far as rain is concerned, we were pretty close to the average. We picked up 3.38″ with the average of 3.40″ of rain. The problem is that we had measurable precipitation on 15 of the 31 days in October, and a number of the days between rain were cloudy. That makes it tough to dry things out between rain events.