YEAR WITHOUT A SPRING

Everyone is calling this a year with a spring...Yes you are right see below for all the info!
Hope everyone was able to enjoy the warm weather we had…We started are string of below normal temps yesterday..This will hold right through Tuesday..We will slowly moderate back to near normal as we head through the upcoming work week…We will also keep off and on showers going right through Saturday evening….Then will shall enjoy a row of dry days…Frost will become a concern mainly for Sunday and Monday nights…If we clear out soon enough Saturday night we may see some frost also…So this discussion is short and sweet and to the point…Not much to talk about… The year without a spring won’t stop…Temps have been averaging some 15 to 20 degrees colder throughout the FA…Everyone is sick of it….


The 6 to 10 day outlook from the CPC from May 18th through May 22nd is calling for near normal temps for the FA while much of the COUNS sees temps below normal too much colder than normal…Close to home above normal temps will be found over Central MN back into Much of ND…. Precip is forecasted to run below normal through this time frame…

The 8 to 10 outlook is calling for temps to be near to slightly below normal with precip near to slightly above normal the first part of Summer still looks like we will have below temps( May, June, and July)

Before we go into details about this…Lets look at some frost data….

The chances of our last frost breaks down like this.

April 25th we have 10% chance of not seeing any more frost.

May 14th we have a 50% chance of not seeing any more frost.

June 2nd we have 90% chance of not seeing any more frost.

Here is an example On June 2nd there is a 90% chance that there will be no more frost…Or there is a 10% chance we could have another frost…Rather easy to understand right? We won’t talk about our chances of seeing our first frost, will save that for towards fall…

First to make long range forecast like we do at The Weather Center, one has to know what the average temps are for every giving month…This data comes from the CPC and it ranges from the time frame of 1971 through 2000 that is the base line for the average temps per month… One also has to understand if we are in a weak or strong El Nino or La Nina period, you also have to look at the anomalies and sea temps… Also teleconnections such as AO, NAO, PNA, AAO, along with the overall blocking pattern that may be in place.. If one doesn’t understand all of this it would be very hard to make a long range forecast…Ok we have already issued our summer forecast back on April 21st

Now let’s look at the average temps for each month…

Jan: H 19 L -1.2

Feb: H 26 L 5.9

Mar: H 37.5 L 19.8

Apr: H 53.9 L 33

May: H 67.2 L 45.3

Jun: H 76.1 L 54.1

Jul: H 80.1 L 58.8

Aug: H 77.9 L 56.4

Sep: H 68.1 L 47.1

Oct: H 56.3 L 36.2

Nov: H 37.7 L 22.6

Dec: H 23.2 L 6.6

This data is for Rice Lake only.. Nevertheless when we do a long term forecast we look at info from each County in the forecast area then we average that all out to come up with our forecast whether it’s our winter forecast or summer forecast… We will have the second part of the summer forecast issued in the middle part of June…. Now with that all said lets even break this down more..We will start with Jan 2011 and work right up to the present time.

Here is the departure from normal based on mean temps per month as of so far….

Jan: -3.3

Feb: - 1.1

Mar: - 3.7

Apr: -1.5

So far in May: -1.1

Now that is the mean temps with the highs and lows averaged out…. We could even break all this down day by day to show everyone how colder than normal the temps have been or how warm they have been, if we did that you would see the highs have been averaging out 10 to 20 degrees colder on some days with some days near normal and above normal, however overall it has been colder than normal….Either way no matter how you cut it, slice it, dice it…. 2011 has been below normal… This spring has been no exception has you can see…. So what everyone is calling the year without spring keeps on going, whether you want to believe it or not.. It’s all in black and white….

So the cold and snowier/wetter than normal winter has spilled over into the final month of meteorological spring which runs from March through May….

All this info can be found at various climate sites….

Looking at the current conditions as of noon today…We find temps in the upper 40s to lower 50s…..Yes it’s cold!

Looking at the forecasted temps through the weekend high temps in the lower 50s Sat upper 50s Sun…Lows in the 30s…. Looking at next week we start with temps in the lower 60s warming to around 65 on Tuesday. So we are still running below normal…. We warm up to normal by Thur with a forecasted high of 67….