Monday, March 01, 1999
March brings a weather roller coaster
BY LISA DONOVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Weather forecasters are predicting you'll need those coats, gloves, hats and a little patience before it feels like spring.
Store window mannequins trade in their gray sweater layers for skimpy beach wear.
Daffodils, pansies and crab apple trees flower.
And hope blossoms anew that the Reds will bring home a world championship.
Welcome to March.
By now, residents have forgotten what the groundhog predicted and are simply waiting for the March 20 starter gun to open the gates to spring.
But the weather forecasters are predicting you'll need those coats, gloves, hats and a little patience before it feels like spring. After all, March sees snowfall averages of 4.3 inches, just behind February, which normally gets 6.1 inches, and January, which averages 7.1 inches.
Average daily temperatures in March normally hover around 41 degrees, according to the National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio.
That's well below the en tire spring season, identified by the weather service as March, April and May, when the overall average daily temperature is 53 degrees.
“March is definitely the cooler month in the spring season,” said Mike Gallagher, a hydrometeorologist technician for the weather service.
It is one of the more interesting months for following weather patterns because it can result in extremes.
“It's basically the seasons changing from cold to hot, and because of that, we end up dealing with summer and winter situations,” Mr. Gallagher said. “Many times we have to deal with the severe weather because you often see the colder weather meeting the hot weather.”
That can result in anything from a tornado to a blizzard.
The Farmer's Almanac captures the difficult segue from winter to spring. For March 13-15 in Ohio, the almanac predicts “cold then mild.” For March 27-31, it predicts “rain, snow, mild.”
For outdoor gardeners, March is a good month to begin preparing the lawn and shrubs for the spring growth spurt. That can mean cleaning up remaining fall leaves and applying fertilizer with crab-grass and weed control.
All of this allows the roots to be nourished during their most active growth period — April and May, said Jim Huesman, nursery manager at Delhi Flower & Garden Centers in Delhi Township.
A gardening “don't” this month is planting tropical annuals, such as petunias: “They need to be in temps above 40 degrees at night,” said Liz Lawwill, an assistant nursery manager at Delhi.
If warmer-than-normal temperatures or extended periods of warm weather push vegetation to flower, be careful of those final frosts.
“You have to be careful of flowering trees and shrubs, (such as) lilacs and magnolias,” she said. “If you get a (prediction of a) hard frost ... just throw a sheet over it.”
Cincinnati.com Weather Page
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