Northeast Early Spring / Warm March Stats

It's been an extremely warm March, with (almost unheard of) double-digit (F) temperature departures from the northern Midwest through Pennsylvania and parts of New England. The week that the trees start to bud and flowers start to bloom varies from year to year of course, but it should come as no surprise that people are getting started early on Spring activities and the cherry blossoms are blooming early this year. We have a whole article about the warmth (and point out that abundant moisture has also helped the "early Spring") but I wanted to give some more stats here in my blog. Below is a map where I've highlighted (approximately) the highest average temperature departures since March 1st in green:

Although the entire Northeast is above normal, the highest readings have stayed west and north of the major cities. Stations of note (see also zoomed map of Mid-Atlantic & New England) include State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map] with +9.5, Selinsgrove, PA with +11.2, Minocqua, Wisconsin with +13.7, and of course Churchill, Manitoba, Canada at an incredible +20.7.

Here in Centre County, rumor has it that trees and flowers are sprouting early. Heck, it had been so warm for so long this month, I went to Lowes last weekend looking for flowers and all they had were pansies, the first flower that they put out in Spring. Looking at the State College temperatures so far this month, I shouldn't have been surprised.

On the graph above, you can see only one day this month has featured a low temperature below our normal for this time of year, and few afternoons have been below normal either. Today marks our 26th day above normal temps-- 13 days in double digits, for an average of +9.5 degrees. In November and December 2009, we had a slightly longer streak of 28 days above normal, but the average during that period was only +6.9 so this warm streak beats that one.

Unfortunately, that record is going to be spoiled by below-normal temperatures tomorrow, in fact it will feel quite wintry again, with a maximum RealFeel temperature of 33. As a result, our +9.5 will be reduced to +7.4 by the end of the month, if I run the data from today on with the AccuWeather.com forecast. Still, this will be the warmest March since I moved here in Fall 1997. The runner up was 2000, which was only +6.5.