CLEVELAND, Ohio - The temperature reached 93 degrees shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday, making it the hottest October day on record in Cleveland.

Just once before - on Oct. 6, 1946 - had the temperature hit 90 degrees in Cleveland in October.

The record for Oct. 1 had been 87 degrees, set in 1952. The normal high for Oct. 1 is 68 degrees. Weather records in Cleveland date to 1871, first being kept downtown and then at what is now Cleveland Hopkins International Airport since 1938.

But the temperature varied greatly across the area. At the same time it was 93 degrees at Hopkins, it was 81 degrees downtown at Burke Lakefront Airport, and 90 at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport.

The last several weeks have been a warm stretch overall in Cleveland. Temperatures reached the 90s four times in September, and on average for the month were 6.3 degrees above normal, the National Weather Service reported.

September was the third straight month with above normal temperatures, factoring in both highs and lows. August averaged 1 degree above normal. July was 3.7 degrees above normal.

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Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See cleveland.com/datacentral or other data-related news.