Thanksgiving Day weather stats and history

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Thanksgiving Day sits in a time period in which we begin to dig more into chilly weather here in the Hoosier state.

However, this holiday can feature a bit of variety weather-wise as it sits in the latter portion of fall. Let’s do a dive into recent Thanksgiving Day weather and the extremes it has seen.

The average high temperature for this holiday has hovered in the mid 40s, and our average low has been in the low 30s. One interesting note to make is that Thanksgiving Day has never seen a 70° day, but it has certainly come very close with the record being 69° (1973). We’ve also had bitterly cold Thanksgivings as well with 1930 nearly featuring sub-zero temperatures.

We also average one-tenth of an inch of rain and snowfall. It is worth noting that accumulating snow on this holiday is quite rare. In fact, only eight percent of Thanksgivings since 1871 have seen measurable snow with TBD

There are a couple of other things to note as well with Thanksgiving weather history. Since 2000, we have only had two days go above the 60° mark (2012, 2015), and there has only been one day that went below freezing (2014).

Since we are in line for a mild and partly sunny Thanksgiving this year, comparing this forecast to the past five years with this holiday yielded some intriguing analysis. Here in Indy, we’ve sat near to slightly above normal in the temperature department with the exception of 2019. The past three Thanksgivings have been gloomy, and last year was the only instance of measurable rain in the past five.

As a whole, Thanksgiving Day is generally a chilly and dry day.