March Review / April Preview

Spring has sprung during the last few days, but here's a quick reminder of the temperatures over the last month:

High Temperatures

We started the month with a very warm March 3rd, at 10.5°C. But then we plunged into a cold snap, which included a High of -11.8°C on March 12, which was the coldest March 12th we've had recently. After the coldsnap, the rest of March ranged between average and warm.

Digging into the numbers, with an average high of 0°C this March was a little bit on the cool side. Going back to 1998 7 years were colder, and 12 were warmer.

The early coldsnap shows up in blue, with 8 Highs below -10°C, and 2 below -15°C . But to balance that off we had 7 highs above 10°C.

Low Temperatures

For the Lows we see the coldsnap in early March again - it was not pleasant, but it was still almost 15°C warmer than the coldest early-March temperatures that we've had in recent memory.

With an average Low of -9°C this March was again on the cool side of things.

The coldsnap doesn't look so bad here though, with only 2 days below -20°C, compared to some years which had 9 or 11.

Snowfall

March was our snowiest month this winter, with 27cm of snow of the winter. It was also the only month since October to have above-average snowfall. And even though things are snowfree right now, we do usually get some snow in April, and even in May about half of the time.

Snowdepth

We just took a close look at snowdepth a few days ago. But all of snow that we got in March briefly pushed our snowdepth up to 15cm. Within a week that had almost all melted though, and then a week later we were down to 0cm.

April Temperatures

As we move into April the temperatures take a bit of a step up. There's a pretty good chance that we'll see some days above 20°C, and (less impressively) most days this month should break freezing. We'll still probably see a few overnight Lows below freezing, though.

I've been doing these topographical maps for a few months now, and with the addition of April things are finally starting to make sense (sort of). Where January, February and March all stayed in the same blue-beige range, with April we finally see a real shift into the warmer temperatures.

The end of March marks Edmonton Weather Nerdery's unofficial end-of-winter, so in a few days we'll be back with a 2016-2017 Winter in Review.