What a crazy weather ride March 2019 gave us here in America's Vancouver. The coldest morning temp of the year arrived in MARCH. What? Yes a pair of back to back sub 20° mornings in fact one of which was low enough to lead the year, yikes. We had it all in March in fact the very first 60°, the very first 70° and the coldest day too. Crazy, we had some snow, some rain, some sunshine, wind, sleet, hail, lightning. It was truly a cornucopia of weather events.Look at that chart! The first week of the month could have been a random January week. On March 6th the daytime high was only 34.9° for heaven's sake. The only real downside other than a bit chillier than average was the pitiful rainfall totals of just 1.26 inches for the whole month! That is desert dry my friends. We need some rain, seriously we should be around 18 inches thus far and I only have 7 inches in the bucket.
The temps were chilly the first half of the month and then almost on queue, springtime arrived right about St. Patrick's Day! I recorded nine days with temps below freezing which is a lot for March. 2 days dipped below 20° which is crazy for the third month. The coldest temp was a 19.4° mark on the morning of the 5th. The chilliest daytime high was the aforementioned 34.9 occurring on the 6th of the month along with a light dusting of snow. Things started looking up on the 15th when I recorded the first 60° mark of the year and two days later the first 70° arrived. March gave us a bunch of January weather, but also managed to spit out 11 days above 60° and four above 70° The warmest temp was recorded on the 20th the first day of spring, when the merc went to 74.1° The warmest overnight low came on the 21st at 49.5° The averages for the month were colder overnight and warmer by day.
On the wet side of things it was, well it wasn't actually. The previously referred number of 1.26 inches is dry, dry, and dry. The wettest day a damp but not soaking wet 0.45 inches and that was one of only two days to produce more than a quarter inch of rain. The snowfall was light with sticking snow on one day only about a half inch with only half of it staying on the ground for any length of time. The second snowfall was flurries only nothing stuck. Just 6 days with measurable rainfall in March and that is nuts.
April is here and with it the chance of any winter weather is down into the low single digit percentages. Spring has sprung, the flowers are in bloom and the weather will start down the long path towards summer. There is still a substantial amount of snow lingering on the foothills up in the 2000 foot range and that means there is a strong probability of frost for the next several weeks. Be mindful gardeners!
So don't forget to get outside and soak up the springtime, yes soak it up my friends, soak it up.
