Stornoway weather in October 2026: wet, windy, and brighter than usual

October 2026 was a month of two halves in Stornoway: a wet and windy opening, a settled and unusually bright middle, and a stormy final week that produced the strongest gust of the month.

Rainfall finished at 174.4 mm against the 1991–2020 October average of 132.6 mm for Stornoway Airport, roughly a third more than normal. Daytime temperatures were exactly average, nights were almost a degree milder, and sunshine was generous. The wind was the story.

The month in numbers

The rain total hides the shape of the month. Almost 45 mm fell in the first five days, another 55 mm between the 24th and 27th, and the fortnight in between was mostly dry and often sunny.

A wet opening

The month began with the wettest single day of October: 20.9 mm on the 2nd, followed by 17.0 mm on the 4th. Both days arrived on a fresh south-westerly, with gusts of 37–46 mph, and the 4th managed no sunshine at all. By the end of the first week the ground at Marybank was saturated, which is the normal October condition here rather than an exception.

The bright middle

From the 15th the pattern changed. A ridge of high pressure settled close to the south-west of Ireland and the Atlantic fronts were pushed north of the islands. The 17th, 18th and 19th recorded no measurable rain at all — the only three-day dry spell of the month — and the 18th and 19th each delivered more than eight hours of sunshine. Twelve days in the month logged eight hours or more in the reanalysis, which is a lot for October, when the Met Office long-term average is 78.3 hours for the whole month.

Those clear nights were also the first properly dark ones since spring. The aurora season was already under way, and the aurora watch page carries the live Kp index for anyone thinking about a late-night drive to a dark beach.

Three days of gale-force gusts

October produced three days with gusts of 60 mph or more, all of them on the back of deep Atlantic lows tracking between Iceland and Scotland. The 14th brought 62 mph with 12.9 mm of rain; the 25th produced the strongest gust of the month at 73 mph, plus 11.1 mm of rain; and the 27th followed with 65 mph. On the 25th the daily maximum temperature was only 8.9 °C, so the wind chill on exposed ground was well below that.

These are 10 metre gusts from the reanalysis grid, not from the station itself. Marybank is a little inland and about 50 metres above sea level, so the anemometer there will have seen different numbers on each of those days; the local weather in Marybank page explains why the site reads differently from the airport and the harbour.

The first cold snap

The clearest night of the month was also the coldest. On the 23rd the temperature fell to 4.0 °C after a maximum of just 8.3 °C, and the 24th followed with a minimum of 4.6 °C, 16.3 mm of rain and a 50 mph gust. Nothing exceptional for the time of year, but enough to end the growing season in exposed gardens and to put the first grass frost on the machair.

Mild nights for the time of year

The mean minimum of 7.9 °C, against an average of 7.0 °C, is the signature of a warm sea. Sea surface temperatures around the Western Isles were still close to 13 °C through October, and a south-westerly airstream crossing that water arrives at the islands only a little cooler than it started. It is the same effect that keeps Stornoway’s winters mild for 58 degrees north — and the same reason the wind matters more here than the thermometer.

What November usually brings

November is a step down rather than a cliff edge. Stornoway Airport averages 9.5 °C by day and 4.5 °C at night, with 127.6 mm of rain over 20.8 wet days and a mean wind of 12.6 knots at 10 metres — the second windiest month of the year after January. The first named storms of the season often arrive in this window, and the Isle of Lewis weather warnings page explains what each warning colour means before one is issued.

For day-to-day planning, the Stornoway weather and 7-day forecast now carries a 14-day outlook as well, so you can see whether the following week is trending unsettled before committing to a ferry booking or a day on the hill.

How this was put together

Figures come from the Open-Meteo ERA5 reanalysis at Stornoway Airport (58.22 °N, 6.32 °W), which is the same 2 km grid the forecast on this site uses. The Met Office 1991–2020 long-term averages are reproduced in the climate table on the weather page. Sunshine is the one figure that is not like-for-like: the reanalysis derives sunshine duration from direct radiation, while the Met Office average comes from a Campbell-Stokes recorder, and the two methods do not agree. Treat the sunshine line as a description of the month rather than a comparison.