As the direct rays of the sun crossed over the equator on their northward journey Sunday evening, we welcomed spring. It’s called the vernal equinox and it is roughly when the day and night are equal. You can read more about the spring or vernal equinox here.
After closing in on the top three snowiest winters since record bookkeeping began, this event was a long time coming. I’ve had the date circled in red on my calendar for about a month now; smiling each day as I crossed off another.
Locally, our forecast on CNYcentral.com calls for weather conditions to more resemble wintertime this middle to late week. I hope you didn’t trade in your ski sweaters for flip flops after last weeks readings in the lower 60s. High temperatures for the period ahead will be well below normal, stuck in the 30s with a risk for snow accumulation.
For long range forecasting, as in the spring outlook, I’ll leave it to the experts who routinely look this far out. I’ve got the next seven days firmly under my belt for television and CNYcentral.com, but for this we’ll check in with the folks at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
The cliff notes version (do they still have those anymore) of their spring outlook for Central New York is this: Near normal temperatures, near normal precipitation, and an above average risk for flooding. The reason for a higher flooding threat is obviously what I mentioned towards the top of this article, the deep snowpack which we had going into March.
While most of this snow has in fact already melted, local rivers and lakes are still running at high levels. This past weekend we alerted you to yet another river flood warning issued for the Tioughnioga River at Cortland. Just an average early spring rainfall could push waterways back to their limit. The flooding threat looks much more perilous for other areas of the country. You can see NOAA’s spring forecast maps for precipitation, temperatures and flooding right here at the top of this story.
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