Overnight Lows carrying May's Load....(5-14-12)

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Reported by: Jim Teske

Email: stormteam@9wsyr.com

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Published: 5/14/2012 5:24 pm

Updated: 5/14/2012 5:30 pm

As we approach the middle of the month, Syracuse’s average May temperature is more than 4 degrees above normal. When you hear us talk about our monthly temperatures for Syracuse the mean temperature we give you is an average of highs and lows for the month and sometimes it is the overnight lows that drive the average, not the highs. This May, so far, is an example of that. Granted, our highs have also been above normal but the lows more so. Here is a chart that shows the anomalies, or how far above or below the high and low temperatures have been, for each day this month.

	High Temp Anomaly	Low Temp Anomaly
May 1	-7	+8
May 2	+10	+8
May 3	+12	+10
May 4	+10	+15
May 5	+2	+6
May 6	+5	-2
May 7	+5	+3
May 8	-2	+11
May 9	+2	+9
May 10	-12	-2
May 11	-2	-4
May 12	+12	+1
May 13	+6	+10
	+3.2	+5.6

I’ve highlighted the individual days where low accounted for more of the monthly average and that has been more than half of the days so far this month.

Here is another sign of those warmer than normal nights. I mentioned before that we’ve had frost (32F or cooler) in 5 of the last 10 Mays but this May we haven’t even been close to getting that cool. If you move the threshold up to days in May below 40 degrees all of a sudden this May looks even more unusual. In most May’s recently we’ve had a handful of days where the we’ve dropped into the 30s.

Year	Days in the 30s
2012 (so far)	0
2011	0
2010	4
2009	6
2008	9
2007	9
2006	3
2005	10
2004	4
2003	5
2002	11

That lack of cool weather has been good news for for gardeners here in the Syracuse area as they prepare for the heart of the growing season. And it looks like there will be more mild nights in the coming 7 days.

Near Normal Spring Rain: While last weekend was dry, last week was rather wet with more than an inch and a half of rain falling. However, we are close to normal for the Spring season (March 1 through yesterday) and we are well below what we had during the very wet Spring of 2011.

	March 1 - May 13 Rainfall
2012	6.77”
Normal	7.43”
2011	12.58”

So even with the rain expected tonight and tomorrow our spring rainfall is still going to end up close to normal.

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