March Temperatures after COLD WINTER

Since January 1st, our average temperature (highs AND lows) is now ranked 7TH COLDEST over the last 100 years! Normal I would include December. However, since most of our winter occurs after the first of the year, I felt this was a better representation of the winter as a whole.

Lake Erie ice cover is still around 95% after a 10% loss last weekend which we regained this week. Notice that their are a handful of years in the past with at least 90% ice cover this late in the season.

By early March, the ice cover historically begins to melt. 6 years still had at least 905 ice cover. 1977, 1979, 1982, 2003, 2007 & 2008.

The big question: what were the March temperatures like in the winters that were COLDER (see list above) than this year?

I created a table that shows all of the high temperatures for March for EACH year in the list above. The years are: 1918, 1920, 1936, 1963, 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1982. I circled the days at or BELOW FREEZING in BLUE and the days ABOVE 60 in RED to show the frequency of the extremes. You can see that its not all that uncommon to have a few days in the 20s and 30s early in March after bitterly cold winters. Yet when the pattern shows spring tendencies (days in the 60s or better), those warmer days typically occur in bunches.

Fear not. There is probably one or two more bursts of winter cold left during the first half of March before our chances of seeing a 60 degree day become increasingly better!