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Is March weather susceptible to being unusual?
The adage about March weather coming “in like a lion, out like a lamb” was far off the mark for southern Wisconsin this year.
In Madison, it was not a particularly cold month as the average temperature was only 0.8 degrees below normal. However, we had the second-snowiest March ever — and snowiest since the record was set in 1959 — with 25.3 inches of accumulated snow. In addition, it snowed on 16 of the 31 days in the past month, so winter was unusually reluctant to loosen its grip. Continue reading
Category: Climate, Meteorology, Seasons
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How did this year’s winter rank?
Meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere is often defined as the three months of December, January and February. The just-ended winter of 2022-23 was notable in a number of ways.
First, here in Madison we started with a chilly month of December during which we averaged 0.8 degrees below normal. This was also the only month of the season in which we had a day with a high temperature below zero — minus 3 on Dec. 23. Continue reading
How much energy goes into making snow?
Since Dec. 1, Madison and Dane County have received approximately 40 inches of snow — 3 inches above normal for that span.
Snow is a form of solid water, and water is the only substance that occurs naturally in all three phases — solid, liquid and invisible gas — in the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading
When does the winter cold end?
It has now been more than two weeks since our last below-zero morning here in Madison — Feb. 3 was minus 8 degrees. Thus, a natural question might be this: Are we done with bitter cold for the winter?
If we use an overnight low temperature at or below zero as the metric, then 45 of the 83 winters since 1939-40 have seen a cold spell after Feb. 20 — a surprising 54.2% of the time. In fact, in 1982, the last zero degree (or colder) night was not until April 7, the latest date in the last 83 years. Continue reading
How did January measure up?
What a strange month January 2023 was in Madison.
The cloudiness was remarkably persistent and, though we don’t have a measurement of that variable for the month at hand, anecdotal assertions we have heard suggest that Madison got only about 8% of its possible January sunshine this past month. Continue reading
