Temperatures are forecasted to warm nicely this weekend for another taste of spring (which assumes we are still in winter). But if you consider the coldest 91 day period for average temperature to be winter, then we started spring a week ago as shown by the featured chart. The top panel displays the trailing 91 day average temperature for Ames with the minimum value labeled for each of the past 2 years. This indicates that the average temperature this winter was ~10 degrees warmer than 2013-2014! The second panel displays the early date of the minimum in trailing 91 day temperature, the overall average is around 1 March with plenty of scatter in the plot. The final panel displays the number of days between the start of spring (as computed by this metric) and the start of the subsequent warmest 91 day period for the summer. There is a lot of variability shown in this plot as well!

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Tags:   spring