The spring season can certainly bring some wild temperature swings as the winter slowly fades and warmer weather takes hold. This year has been no exception. Temperatures across the Tuscarawas Valley have gone from record highs to bone-chilling cold over the last few weeks.
After waking up this morning to 28°, it’s hard to believe we had record-breaking warmth just this past Saturday.
Tuesday will be another chilly day, but it may also be the last unseasonably cold day we see for a while. Temperatures do look to trend warmer going forward after today. And the warmer temperatures are expected to remain consistently warm over the next week or two.
Several weather model ensembles agree with this general trend. Even the NWS Climate Prediction Center (CPC) bears this out as well.
It’s also been a fairly wet spring so far this season. We’ve picked up nearly 8 inches of rain (7.94″ to be exact) officially at the New Phila airport since March 1st. That’s a little over an inch more than we would expect for the months of March AND April combined – and we’re only now just wrapping up the first full week of April.
Precipitation analysis from the NOAA Hydrologic Rainfall Analysis Projection, or HRAP, indicates a rainfall anomaly of 5.6 inches over the last 60 days.
But, it does appear we will get a bit of a break…at least over the next 7 days. We may get some light rain on Friday and Friday night as a weak front moves through the region. This shouldn’t amount to much more than a couple of tenths to a quarter of an inch, if any.
The CPC’s latest 6 to 10-day precipitation outlook leans slightly toward above-average chances of higher-than-average precipitation through the period.
At least it looks like we’ll get a much-needed break this week with the rain. Hopefully, the break will allow the river and area streams to recede and our yards and fields to dry out.
So yeah, maybe we’ll have some dry weather and warmer temperatures headed our way after all.
