Wild March In Vermont Comes Out "Normal" Here's How

Tonks the Weather Dog warily watches a heavy layer of snow slide
off our roof amid deep snows in mid-March, St. Albans, Vermont.
To anyone out in Vermont weather this March the weather
seemed abnormal. But average out the extremes, and the month
turned out about normal in the weather department. 

March was consistently warm. It was consistently cold. There was a lot of snow. Lots of storms. Nor'easters.

So the climate summary for the month in Vermont will have off the charts weird stats, right?  

Wrong.

The only weather statistic of note I could find was that Burlington, Vermont had its sixth snowiest March, with 30.1 inches of snow.

But that was nowhere near the snowiest March, in 2011, when there was 47.6 inches of snow.

Other than that, the month seems
like a yawner on paper, even the weather was anything but boring in March.

East of the Green Mountains, Vermont's snowfall in March, 2018 was heavy, but not record breaking. Except perhaps in the far southern Green Mountains.

The mean temperature in Burlington in March, 2018 was 31.3, just 0.3 degrees "warmer" than normal. But we can really call temperatures for the month normal, since it was so close to average.

However, temperatures got "stuck" in various ways during the month. Typically, you get a couple, few days of warmer than average temperatures, folllowed by one, two, or three days that are on the cool side, back to warm, etc.

Not this month. Each of the first 15 days of March in Burlington were warmer than normal. That was followed by 12 consecutive days of colder than average weather. (The last four days we a bit on the warm side.)

Average the two long temperatures out, and you see how we came close to "normal" for the month, though it didn't feel normal.

Interestingly, the hottest day of March, 2018 was much cooler than February's hottest day. In February, Burlington had its second warmest February temperature on record --- 69 degrees. The warmest day we could muster in March, 2018 was just 54 degrees. It was the coolest "high" for March in years.

Also, the coldest temperature of the month in both February and March was minus 2.

Elsewhere in Vermont, March turned out just a wee bit cooler than normal, but not by much. Essentially, it was normal.

Rain and melted snow amounts for March, 2018 turned out to be very close to normal, too. Burlington had 2.63 inches of precipitation, which was a little less than half an inch above normal. Monpelier and St. Johnsbury were pretty much on the money for precipitation during the month.

As I always say, I don't know what the next month has in store for us. I have a feeling that April as a whole will be cooler than normal here in Vermont. I base that on projections indicating the first two weeks of the month will be chilly. And some days during that period will be much colder than normal.

Long range projections are never that good, and right now, they're not at all helpful at predicting what the second half of April will be like. It will be warm unless it's cold, and wet unless it's dry. That doesn't tell you much, does it?