The amount of snow that officially fell in Portland this month was 2.4 inches, and that number is similar for much of southern Maine. This amount of snow is well below average and means we went the entire month without a major snow event.

Amazingly, even with lower than average snowfall in December and March, the heavy snow from Jan. 23 through much of February, will leave Maine’s largest city with more than 90 inches of snow this season. We could of course see more snow before the chances of such an occurrence go to zero.

The cold is a bigger story this month and while this has been a cold March, it won’t finish in the top 10 coldest. You might be surprised that last March was colder than this one and there are many other years when March was colder in the early part of the 20th century and later part of the 19th.

However, if you want to feel you suffered through a cold period of time here’s a statistic for you: since Jan. 26, nearly every day has been below average. Only during nine of those 64 days did the temperature come in above average. Today is likely to be cool again.

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The chilly air has kept the snow on the ground the entire month with many places still exceeding a foot of snow on the level. There is still about 8 inches officially in Portland, although those surfaces which face south are showing bare ground. Sunshine and temperatures in the 40s the next couple of days will melt more snow and when we get into the 50s by Friday, even more will disappear.

With March nearly finished, we can look ahead. April, like nearly every other month in New England, can be fickle. It’s likely to go below freezing most nights during April, although the chances of not seeing a frost each morning begin to increase rapidly along the coast by the close of April.

It does often snow in April, but it’s also not surprising when it doesn’t. Many of you remember the April fools snowstorm of 1997 when 1 to 2 feet of snow fell. Another big snowstorm occurred on April 6 and 7, 1982 with similar amounts. There’s been very little snow in April during the past 15 years. While we can’t use this to predict snowfall this April, the trend has been for less, not more snow the past four weeks and this is likely to continue.

Temperatures in April warm nicely, with daily highs, in a typical year reaching well into the 60s by the end of the month. This April is likely to continue to be cool, especially the first half of the month. The long range maps have April 2015 ending up below average, but not as extreme as February or March. Even if we see averages 1 to 3 degrees short, it will still feel much more like spring this month.

The cool spring start doesn’t mean a cold wet summer is in store. As a matter of fact, if this pattern continued through July and August we’d have warm and dry weather with low humidity again, similar to last year. One can only hope.

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