Bad weather is largely responsible for some recent weak economic data and should not lead the Federal Reserve to stop reducing a key stimulus program, a top central bank official said Monday.

Instead, with economic growth still forecast to pick up this year, the Fed might need to quicken the pullback of its monthly bond-buying program, said Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

“In recent weeks, there has been a blizzard of economic reports, which have come in weaker than expected,” Plosser said in a speech in Paris.

“I believe that weakness largely reflects the severe winter weather rather than a frozen recovery,” he said. “So we must be wary of attaching too much significance to the latest numbers.”

Concerns about a slowdown eased Friday when the Labor Department reported stronger-than-expected job growth in February. The report confirmed the belief that snow and bitter cold in much of the country were the main reason for some weak economic data and that growth would improve in the spring.

Plosser, a voting member of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee, is a so-called inflation hawk. He has opposed the Fed’s bond-buying program, which began in September 2012 with purchases of $85 billion a month, out of concerns it could trigger higher prices. So far, however, inflation has remained in check.

Plosser told reporters that the Fed should stick to the plan announced in December of reducing the monthly bond purchases by $10 billion at each future meeting. “It’s important that we send a signal that we are pretty committed to this current pace,” he said, according to Reuters.