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March 2026 - Winter or Spring?

From summery low 90s in some areas just a few days ago back to winter now! It was down to 32 all of the way down to parts of N FL including Cross City, Crestview, and Pensacola! KSAV was 34.

Look out tonight for areas that radiate decently to have even colder lows.
 
31 for the low at RDU this morning. 27 at GSO. My old stomping grounds of TLH got down to 35, which is pretty good for this time of year, too. TLH may go below freezing tonight, though!!
 
GaWx said:
From summery low 90s in some areas just a few days ago back to winter now! It was down to 32 all of the way down to parts of N FL including Cross City, Crestview, and Pensacola! KSAV was 34.

Look out tonight for areas that radiate decently to have even colder lows.
Click to expand...
Even Gainesville, FL ( Phil's hometown) may radiate down to 32 tonight !
 
I can imagine that someone living in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes regions might get the impression that Winter may last well into Spring. Maybe not, as the numerical models have been largely successful at forecasts in North America since January 1, and are introducing mild/warm values to much of the lower 48 states from now through April. But I will admit that Canada's predictions range from the absurdly cold to cool, with the milder values in the U.S. making only occasional appearances into the Prairie Provinces and the Ontario Peninsula.

Confidence is growing on a weak to moderate El Nino episode that reaches that oceanic strata around August 1. We are still in a negative/neutral reading at sector 3.4 in the equatorial Pacific Basin, which is far below earlier outlooks that were trying to push that "Super El Nino" tag and wipe the slate clean of any chances for tropical cyclones in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. We should know around May 1 how apparent weather will work out by later summer and fall. My earliest and best guess is that we top out around +1.0 deg C deviation around Labor Day. This will be a long process and still capable of a mostly average sea surface reading in the central and western sections of the Pacific Ocean.

The ferocity of early convection in recent weeks may calm down in about a month or so, that is if the Sonoran heat ridge becomes the dominant feature of the 500MB longwave pattern. I have seen from analogs that huge MCS formations will target the western and central Gulf Coast in the first half of Spring, while more linear, prefrontal events work into the middle latitudes. This would appear to be a case of extensive northwest flow thunderstorms and cold frontal passages from the Upper Midwest through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley into the Mid-Atlantic. Thise localities under the heat ridge complex (roughly the West Coast through Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas may be looking at a blistering hot and dry summer.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Think about a mild/warm pattern this spring outside of the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, which should be cloudier and cooler than normal.





Prepared by Meteorologist LARRY COSGROVE on
Sunday, March 15, 2026 at 3:05 P.M. CT​
 
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