A tranquil morning will eventually translate into a rather wet afternoon and evening with periods of showers becoming more of a steady rain for the commute home.

As you may have figured out, I was on vacation and arrived back in New England early Wednesday morning. I think I needed a break from work more this year than usual. The cold, the snow, the inability to even begin to work on the yard, all combined to make the vacation much more desirable and enjoyable. I have seen spring, and it does exist.

Unfortunately, we only lost about 3-4 inches of snow during the time I was gone, leaving 16 inches of snow in the backyard and closer to 24 still in the front. Since the snow from the snowblower ends up on the front yard, and it’s in the shade, it’s one of the last places to reveal the ground. I think I have another 10 days to go.

On the positive side, you have likely noticed the snowbanks continuing to pull back from the side of the road, as even on cold days, the blacktop heats up enough to melt the nearby snow.

A review of the temperatures over the few days indicates a steady melting of the snow is likely. Although the melting will slow to a crawl this weekend, it picks back up next week. There should be a 5-9 inch loss of snowcover across the area by months end. This will of course expose more and more ground, but for those of you with 10-20+ inches of snow still on the level, you are going to need to have a bit more patience. I’m not going to attempt to estimate the final departure date of the big snowbanks.

The cold of the past week makes it difficult to imagine exactly where temperatures would be in a more typical year. Here in New England, we often have extremes during March and April, so average isn’t so easy to come by.

This year, March is going to end up a significantly colder than average. It will be one of the colder months in the Portland Jetport Airport record keeping era, but not in the top 10 if you include the city records.

In most years, most days would be in the 40s this time of year. The chart below shows the range of temperatures most typical for March 26th. Late today we will actually be on the higher side of the curve, but this isn’t somewhere we are accustomed to this spring.

Tonight’s rain event should further push the region closer to feeling like spring. Where the snow isn’t as deep, mostly right along parts of the southern Maine coast, as the water penetrates the snowpac, it’s going to help break up the frost in the ground and allow some of the early bulbs and perennials to start growing.

There won’t be enough rain for flooding issues, however some big puddles are likely as well as some movement of the ice along the rivers. Ice Jams are going to increase in frequency as the weather warms.

In the mountains the rain will become a steady snow and some of the higher peaks could see 3-5 inches of new, but wet snow.

The long-range outlook keeps the area colder than average for the beginning of April. The chart below shows how temperatures increase during April. The good news, even if we are 5 degrees below average, it’s still going to be in the 50s for most of the month.

The National Weather Service issued their new 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks recently. These outlooks forecast general trends of temperature, but do give a good sense of the pattern. Notice the northeast remain colder than you’d expect for late March and early April for the next two weeks. It continues to be a very slow crawl out of winter.