Yes, it was a record breaker. The week-long break that was this year’s National Day was the hottest ever. As much of China experienced a heat wave, in our own Nanjing and Jiangsu Province, temperatures rose to their highest levels in history.
As released yesterday on the Jiangsu Meteorology (江苏气象) official WeChat account, the average temperature in Jiangsu Province over the National Day holiday was 25.2 degrees Celcius.
That’s a number for both day and night time temperatures combined, meaning that it was indeed the hottest yet.
Such record breakers were the result of the influence of a subtropical high in the region which led to temperatures 5.9 degrees Celsius higher than the same period last year.
They are the highest temperatures for the National Day period in history. Or rather, since records began.
Temperatures were highest in the western parts of Jiangsu, with Liyang in the southwestern city of Changzhou recording the maximum of 36.0 degrees.
Elsewhere, the highest average temperature was found to be in Suzhou, at over 27 degrees, while the lowest was recorded in the northeastern city of Yancheng, at less than 22 degrees.
In our very own Nanjing, also in the west of the province, the average temperature over the holiday was 26.1 degrees Celsius, 6.4 degrees higher than last year and again, the highest in history.
In Jiangsu as a whole, 80 percent of weather stations recorded temperatures of over 32 degrees on 3 and 4 October.
Also on 3 October, Nanjing’s Gaochun and Lishui districts showed highs of 35.6 and 35.0 degrees, respectively.
While the holiday closed with a significant dip in temperature and a light rain in some places, there is not much reprive in sight. Maximum temperatures are set to return to about 30 degrees in the coming days, meaning there is still little hope of a Nanjing autumn in the short term.
