Spring swings.... (4-9-12)

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Central New York growers are watching their fruit trees anxiously. (WSYR-TV)

Reported by: Jim Teske

Email: stormteam@9wsyr.com

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Published: 4/09/2012 5:18 pm

Updated: 4/09/2012 5:28 pm

As anyone who has spent most of their life in central New York can tell you there can be all kinds of weather during the early spring season. Warmth and sunshine one day then cold winds and snow the next day. If there is a word that describes our weather this time of year it is ‘variability’ So while it may seem like we’ve taken a step backward over the last week or so it is quite normal.

If you look at the Storm Team weather calendar and the ‘normal’ daily high temperatures you see a steady climb from 42 F in the middle of March to 57 F in the middle of April but in reality our temperatures rarely behave like a straight line. In this graph below I’ve drawn a hypothetical line of what our temperatures can actually do this time of year on top of the ‘normal’ line..

To give you a better idea as to the variability of temperatures this time of year let’s take a look at at April 9th over the last 40 years. The ‘normal’ high on this date is 54 F but since the early 1970s getting temperatures into the 50s is not the most common weather on this date.

High Temperatures	April 9th Highs Since 1972
30s	9
40s	11
50s	8
60s	9
70s	3

54 F may be the ‘normal’ high today but you are more likely to have a day in the 40s than the 50s. In fact you have better odds of 30s, 40s and 60s on April 9th. We are going to end up with a high of 52 F on April 9th this year but you can argue that even though it is only a couple degrees from ‘normal’ that 52 F is actually unusual when you look at the past numbers. It’s only after you add all those high temperatures that span from the 30s to 70s and divide by 40 years do you come up with 54 F.

This is not to say what we went through in March with the record warmth was NOT unusual. It was unprecedented as I mentioned in a blog last week. It is just the idea of swings from warm to cold and vise versa in spring should be expected.

Of course, everyone wants to know when we see a swing upward in temperature. It looks like it will be this upcoming weekend but we will probably have to fine tune over the next couple of days exactly how warm it will get.

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