March Was A Solidly Warm Month In Vermont

Paw prints left in the snow from Henry the Weather
 Dog after he took some weather observations on 
March 20 in St. Albans, Vermont. The month 
turned out to be solidly warmer than average.

The weather headlines in the United States was the extraordinary heat that shattered all-time record March highs. 

Vermont was on the outside of all this weather excitement, much cooler than the extreme heat in the South and West. 

Even so, we in Vermont ended up with a March that was solidly warmer than normal. As measured in Burlington, the average temperature was 36.4 degrees, a good 4.1 degrees milder than average. It was 19th warmest out of the past 139 years.

As the month opened, we had just been through four consecutive cooler than normal months, and were entering yet another winter cold wave. By the morning of March 2, it was below zero statewide.

But then, that was about it.  The warming trend peaked on March 7-12, when every day was at least 14.4 degrees warmer than normal. 

The heat peaked on March 10. Burlington reached 73 degrees, breaking the date's record high by an impressive 10 degrees. It was also the warmest temperature for so early in the season. Other hot Vermont cities that day include  71 in St. Johnsbury and 74 in Bennington, 

Before the mid-month heat wave, Vermont rivers were locked up in thick ice from a long, cold winter. The sudden warmth led to numerous ice jams in the Green Mountain State, Some of them caused minor flooding. It could have been a lot worse if there had been a lot of rain, but precipitation during the warm spell was light. 

The rest of the month toggled between relative warmth and winter chill, but there never were any particular extremes. 

Winter did return after the heat wave that was centered around March 10. A storm on March 20 had been forecast to dump half a foot of snow on northeastern Vermont, but only a couple inches in the Champlain Valley. 

Instead, nearly five inches of "wet cement" snow came down in just a few hours during the late morning an afternoon. It turned out to probably be the biggest traffic snarler since a similar late day dump of wet snow in November. 

It was a reminder that winter was not over. 

That day's snow (which fell as rain in southern Vermont) was a good shot of some needed precipitation, though. There's drought lingering from last autumn in parts of the state, so a wet spring is actually a good thing this  year. 

The news on the precipitation front in Vermont was sort of meh as rain and melted snow rain just about normal statewide. An exception was in the southwest, where Bennington turned up with a nice 4.36 inches of precipitation, which was 1.71 inches above normal ,

On the hand, Burlington;s precipitation of 2.27 inches was only 0.03 inches above average,  That was just the 68th wettest March out of the past 144 years. 

APRIL OUTLOOK

The month has begun with its usual schizophrenic attitude, with rapidly changing temperatures, and weather. 

Overall, NOAA expects most of the the U.S. to be warmer than normal in April. An exception is the Great Lakes a New England area a tossup: It'll end up either warmer or colder than normal, out somewhere near average. Precipitation would be above normal if NOAA's forecast is accurate.