April, it’s finally here!  While April can be cold, stormy, and generally a frustrating month here in southern Maine, it’s not going to be as cold as March and that I can say with 100% confidence.

If you thought March was cold you are correct.  The preliminary March data from the National Weather Service shows the  past 31 days marked the coldest March Portland has seen since 1967, nearly a half century ago. 

The cold actually kept snowfall at bay and Maine largest city only saw 3.3 inches of snow the entire month.  While the ski areas saw feet of snow, much of the precipitation this month either fell as rain or not at all.

Before our rainstorm of the past few days’ precipitation in Portland was actually below normal.  The rain brought nearly 2 inches of rain to the area the past three days or nearly half of what fell the entire month.

The average temperature in Portland in March was 26.7F or an eye-popping  6.6 degrees below average.  Temperature-wise the month was very close to a typical February rather than March.   Here’s a fun fact about our cold March.   Two years ago the same month averaged 41.1F or 7.6 degrees above normal.   In two years, we’ve experienced Marches with a 14.2 average degree swing!

The coldest March on record was back in 1956 when the average was 25.6 degrees.  We were only a degree off that mark thus punctuating the extent and depth of the cold.

In a more typical March in which we only saw a few inches of snow all of the snow would be long gone, but the cold kept the snow cover around much longer than you would expect.  The image below gives you much of the overall data from the month of March.  This is from the National Weather Service in Gray.

April

The good news is April has arrived and the three days of clouds and rain is now gone.  Sunshine is going to be with us through the rest of the week.  Temperatures will moderate nicely reaching the 40s.  Across interior portions of York County some towns could see 50F or higher later this week.  The snow banks in the parking lots will continue to dwindle and I suspect those of you who have yards facing south will see some early spring bulbs blooming.   There was still an inch of snow reported on the ground officially in Portland yesterday.  I would venture to say that number is about to hit zero for the first time in months this week.

On Friday night a weather system will cross the area and bring with it a few showers.  These showers could linger into Saturday, but it will be warm enough for rain not any snow.  Across the far northern ski areas and mountains there may be a wintry mix from this system, but I am not expecting anything major.

April does average just over 3 inches of snow. You only need to go back 7 years to find over 15 inches of snow during the 4^th month.  I’m certainly not forecasting that kind of snow for this month, but you might want to not put the snow shovel too far in the back of the garage just yet.

I’ll be updating the forecast on Twitter @growingwisdom. Follow @growingwisdom

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