Cold Pattern Continues

We have had a strange winter this year which began in November and ended in early December, then woke back up in February.  Our meteorological winter draws to a close in a couple weeks, however we will not see a magical quick transition to warm air and crocuses any time soon.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel with the days getting longer as the sun climbs higher in the sky we do have warmer days ahead and seasonal temperature averages begin to climb rather than fall.  Daylight savings time begins on March 10th, then we can start to dig out the baseballs and mitts with the anticipation of a long season ahead.

Regardless of what the CPC maps depict with probabilities of cooler than normal temps our temps will begin to rise into the 40s and 50s in March and chances of snow will decrease being replaced by rain.  March is our transition month into spring which will be a sigh of relief for many.  I still wonder about the possibility of a stormy spring with the battle of polar and tropical air from mid March into April.  In the past we have had winter abruptly end passing over spring altogether jumping right into summer.  I am not seeing this happening anytime soon which would be welcome news to fruit growers in the state.

We are still looking at Skywarn training for this spring, however the NWS office in Grand Rapids hasn’t issued their schedule for our annual meeting in Shelbyville yet.  Slim has reached out to his friends there to see what is up with that.  It can sometimes be hard to dig out info from the GR site compared to other NWS sites in the U.S. as they have not updated their format as other sites have or have been slow to transition to a more modern format.  The meeting in Shelbyville covers Allegan and Barry Counties.

There is currently light snow moving into Chicago and Milwaukee which will overspread our area later this afternoon – the snow is bumping into a drier airmass over Michigan this morning but moisture will slowly move in from the south allowing the snow to fall with the greatest amounts falling south of I96 though only an inch or two are expected with lesser amounts north of Grand Rapids.

Monday and Tuesday we will be under the influence of high pressure before our next system moves in for Tuesday night and Wednesday which may bring in a wintry mix once again….