Incredible Arctic Front Leads to March Cold Records
UPDATE 3/7: Harrisburg set new record lows Saturday as well. See updates on the Centre County Mesonet Blog. For more information on February's record cold, see the link to my new blog below.
Hi folks, I'm back into blogging mode, fresh off of my yearly trip to New York City for Social Media week. While I was gone, the Northeast continued to freeze under a record cold February. I froze my butt off in NYC and got Walking Pneumonia. I'm done with this winter. And yet last night, the predictions of record lows once again made themselves known. This morning, here at AccuWeather HQ in State College, Pennsylvania, I experienced the coldest day in March that I ever have, when I awoke to minus 8 degrees F.
The map above shows temperatures at 6 a.m. A dozen continental U.S. states were below zero this morning; all but one (Florida) were below freezing (32 F). Once again one of the most impressive low temperature areas was Kentucky; in Henderson City, southwest of Evansville, Indiana, they had never been below minus 4 degrees in March. This morning they fell to minus 9. My recording of minus 8 here in Centre County is not always a guaranteed low temperature during the entire winter; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fell to zero; as far as I can tell, it had never been below 5 in March there before!
NOHRSC shows that more than 50% of the area of the Continental United States was covered by snow this morning, in fact there was snow on the ground in every state except South Carolina & Florida! On March 6!
The latest arctic front to come through was indeed an impressive one. At one point yesterday, the 30 miles between New Bern and Washington, North Carolina, held a nearly 40-degree temperature difference! It was 83 in New Bern but 42 in Washington.
That's one of the most incredible spreads I've ever seen, especially on the East Coast (it's more common in the southern Plains). Absolutely incredible. When the front blasted through New Bern, you could see it coming on radar (like a thunderstorm "outflow boundary," it was pushing dust out in front of it). Watch that temperature dive in New Bern as it comes through!
Wind gusts to 50 mph were observed in the area, shaving 29 degrees off the temperature at Fayetteville in less than an hour and dropping Jacksonville from 75 to 52 in 20 minutes!
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