I hesitate to say this out loud, but I suspect April will look and feel like spring this year. No knee-deep slush. Greening lawns. Boats in the water. A generous supply of 60s, even a few 70s. I take nothing for granted. I'm still haunted by April 2018′s 26 inches of snow.
To be honest, Aprils are wonky and weird. The warming signal is most prevalent in fall and winter. Summers are trending more humid with consistently higher heat indexes. But from western Minnesota into the Dakotas, Aprils since 1970 have actually cooled. There's no good scientific explanation as to why. Rapid warming of the Arctic? Perhaps. We don't know what we don't know.
Welcome to a raw, rainy and windy Sunday. A slow-moving storm may drop up to 1 inch of rain by Tuesday, with a slight cooling trend late week. But spring comes roaring back with a good shot at 70 degrees next weekend (and a few potentially strong thunderstorms a week from today). Cooler air follows, but no sign of the polar vortex. More cold fronts. Count on it. Even so, an early spring this year?
