WASHINGTON – The countdown clock to the beginning of spring on March 20 can’t tick quickly enough for Washingtonians sick of enduring winter weather.
But, March and April can be tricky here weather-wise.
“As recently as last year we had a storm that dropped a little more than 7 inches in the city and more than that in the outer lying areas, and that was just before St. Patrick’s Day on the sixteenth and seventeenth,” says Chris Strong, warning coordination meteorologist with the Baltimore-Washington National Weather Service forecast office.
March of 2014 was the coldest March in nearly 20 years in the D.C. Metro area. And during the Blizzard of 1993 more than a foot of snow fell across the region on March 11 and 12.
Snow in April here also isn’t a complete anomaly. Since official record keeping began in 1888, D.C. has had measurable snow in April 20 times, The Capital Weather Gang reports.
The most recent April snow here fell in 2007. This April hopefully will be warm and mild for residents and visitors so they can enjoy the peak bloom of the area’s iconic cherry trees along the Tidal Basin, which is predicted to be April 11-14.
In the meantime, don’t pack away those winter coats.
“This March, it looks like we’re going to be continuing to stay colder than normal. And exactly how much colder than normal will dictate how much snow we can get here in the waning weeks of winter,” Strong says.
