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Category Archives: Seasons
Was May abnormal this year?
The just completed month of May was quite unusual in southern Wisconsin this year.
First, it was a bit cooler than normal, with the average temperature ending up 0.6 degrees below normal. Dryness over central and western Canada brought large wildfires to those areas much earlier than normal this year, and the smoke from those fires gave us a number of orangey sunrises and sunsets this past month, which are more normal in July and August. Continue reading
Can record high and low temperatures help define regional definitions of seasons?
Though it now seems to be fully in swing, the spring has sure seemed delayed in coming this year in southern Wisconsin. This made us wonder if there might be a more refined, and local, way to think about the calendar-day boundaries of the seasons.
In research undertaken to write a recent column, we catalogued Madison’s record high and low temperature data for each calendar day employing data that went back to 1939. An interesting partition of the full year resulted from this simple analysis. Continue reading
Category: Climate, Meteorology, Seasons
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What causes April showers?
The weather this past week in Madison has been very interesting.
On at least three occasions we experienced a mix of precipitation types — with snow, hail, graupel and rain in various combinations. Continue reading
How could we be in a fire danger this early in spring after all the winter snow?
This 2022-23 winter — December through February — was exceptional in that it was Wisconsin’s wettest meteorological winter on record, and those records go back to 1895.
The state also experienced significant snowfall in March. When the snow slowly melts into the soil, it provides needed water for plant growth. Continue reading
Category: Climate, Seasons, Weather Dangers
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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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