Every month, the National Data Climate Center (NCDC) has the latest monthly U.S. temperatures available online by the 8th or 9th day of the month. It's now the 12th day of November and NCDC still has not made available the October U.S. temperatures. Although the previous page link leads to this NCDC image suggesting October 2010 temperatures are available, all the data behind the scenes is only through September 2010 (Updated: as of 9:00a EST, 11-15-2010, October temperature data was finally made available on NCDC site).
The reason for the "unprecedented" delay could be a significant technical issue but since their site has no announcement as to the delay, it can be assumed that technical difficulties are not the issue.
Another possibility for the delay is NCDC is working on a set of new temperature maladjustments (ie, fabricating fake temperatures) since government bureaucrats and climate alarmist scientists are in serious need of increased global warming. One can imagine as the wheels are falling off the gravy train of global warming research due to non-warming, there is a sense of desperation to produce some heat, like ASAP.
Since the NCDC, NASA, CRU and other climate centers are old-hands at temperature fabrication, this would be a plausible explanation for the significant delay at releasing October 2010 U.S. temperatures. When the U.S. consistently shows long-term cooling, it may have become essential to "fix" that embarrassing problem.
Hey, when it comes to "science," anything is possible with the liberal/left/progressive administration of Obama.