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What happened to spring?

By Jack Hughes for The 3 min read
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After a mild and wet February, the month of March has produced a lot of cold snowy winter weather. February’s temperatures averaged 7 degrees above normal and rainfall was over twice the average.

March has seen 23 out of 28 days with below normal temperatures. Many of these cold days had a reading of at least 10 degrees below the average. It looks like the month will end up about 8 degrees below normal. Upper level wind flow was persistently out of the north and helped produce a lot of the cold snowy weather. New England and New York got the worst of the snow, but we still got our share.

With the wet and mild weather in February, it looked like we were headed for an early spring, but winter decided to send down reinforcing cold air and this quickly put an end to any spring growth that was getting started. The authorities in Punxsutawney have put out an arrest warrant for the groundhog named Phil as winter has certainly over stayed the extra six weeks that he had forecast.

At last report, Phil was nowhere to be found. Rumor has it he was seen heading south.

Speaking of the south, this past week we were traveling home from a vacation in Florida and saw much evidence that spring was on the march northward. Macon, Georgia was full of cherry blossoms along with dogwood and azalea. South Carolina was full of red bud trees and some daffodils and these extended into North Carolina. Winter was still putting up a good fight in Northern North Carolina as well as Virginia and West Virginia where 6-12 inches of snow replaced the northward movement of spring growth.

The annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. has been delayed due to the cold and snow. It will be a week or two later than normal this year and good viewing should take place from about April 7. Last year at this time, the our area was awash in spring growth. Magnolia, red bud, Bradford pear trees were already blooming, as well as yellow forsythia bushes and daffodil flowers.

Looking ahead, the next week keeps temperatures a bit below normal. The average temperatures for the first week of April are a high of 60 degrees and a low of 36. With the strengthening of the sun and longer days, temperatures by the end of the month average 70 and 44.

The warmest April day was 93 and the coldest 15 degrees on April 8, 1982. Measurable snow can fall on any April day. Six inches fell across the area on April 5, 1987 and an unbelievable 8 inches in the lowlands and upwards of 20 inches demoralized the mountain area according to the “Daily News Standard” on April 28, 1928.

Spring, it’s just around the corner.

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