Spring Overview

By Michael Clair

The weather pattern almost all this winter was a very unusual one. For almost the entire winter we had a huge blocking pattern develop with a strong high pressure system over Greenland and Northern Canada. This was the reason that we had very little snow, only about 35 inches, while parts of the Mid Atlantic had almost 90 inches of snow. That high pressure system is the same reason it was not very cold because in warm air from the Canadian Maritimes. Now that winter is just about over, it is time for spring.

The weather pattern looks like it will stay mostly the way it was all winter for the spring. The spring looks like it will be warmer than normal with only very brief bursts of below normal temperatures. There is one change in the weather pattern from the winter however, and that is that we will likely have above average rainfall. The rain will not be the kind of light rain and drizzle that drags on for days, but it looks like it will come in huge storms energized by the El Niño weather pattern. We have already had two huge storms, one on the February 25, with around 7 inches of rain and 90mph winds, and the storm around March 14 that dropped around 10 inches of rain with 45mph winds. It’s strong storms like these that are going to make our rainfall above normal for the spring, but leave with many more sunny days than rainy ones. This means that we will likely have more flooding throughout the spring and more coastal erosion, which is really starting to tear away at some beaches.

With the exception of the next few days which will be around or slightly below normal, most of the spring looks like it will be above normal. When I say normal and average those are the averages of all the data taken for about the past 80 or so years, and when you add up all the temperatures for a specific date and divide them by the number of years it has been taken you get the average, or normal temperature, and same with rainfall. Here are some of the averages for the next few months. For the end of March the average high temperature is 51°, and the average low is 29°. By the end of April the average high temperature is 63°, the average low is 38°, and we normally see 4.09” of rain for the month. By the end of May the average high temperature is 74°, the average low is 49°, and we normally see 3.61” of rain in May.