First Alert Weather In-Depth: March (weather) Madness

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Not that I am trying to make light of the kind of weather conditions that we get this time of the year, but what about the wacky weather that we usually see during the month of March. We know that March can bring some strange weather and we get huge swings in the temperature—sometimes day to day basis.

We had some significant heat back in 2012 with a record high temperature of 80°. What about the wind storm of 2017 when we had a wind gust of 81 mph? We had a lot of trees and power lines come down that year. What about the blizzard of March 1999? That year we had over 40 inches of snow in just three days. It took a while to dig out of that one. And then of course, if you’re older like me, you remember the ice storm of 1991 when we had a half-inch of glaze and ice accumulation. In a lot of ways, that was the most devastating storm that we have ever had for all of Western New York.

This is the time of the year—even though it is later in the season—we get a lot of cold air still coming down out of Canada. We see big swings in the jet stream and even significant bouts of milder coming up along the East Coast. That can be the battleground and it really comes down to the clash of seasons. This time of the year the days are getting longer as we get more daylight and the sun is getting higher in the sky. As a result, we can get a higher ground temperature. So even when you do get snow this time of the year, it will often result in a much faster rate of melting snow. When it melts rapidly, we see a rapid runoff of the snow which can cause river flooding.
I got a feeling that we have more of that wacky weather coming our way very soon.