IEM Daily Feature
Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Spring Starts Soon?

Posted: 25 Feb 2015 05:43 AM

With winter storm warnings in effect for today and another round of very cold air set to arrive after the snowfall, it is difficult to imagine that spring time is almost here. The featured map looks at the end date of the coldest 91 day period based on daily climatology from NCDC. If you divide the year up into 4 equal length seasons (~91 days) and then compute the coldest stretch of 91 days, you could consider this to be winter. So once this stretch ends, you are then in springtime! This analysis shows that Iowa is only a few days from starting spring, but this year will be a bit different as a cold February and warm December will cause the coldest 91 day period this year to shift well into March.

Voting:
Good = 18
Bad = 5
Abstain = 3

Tags:   spring