March’s Midway Point

 

Blossoms Galore !  Bethesda, Maryland

March is arguably the most changeable weather month of the year in the Nation’s Capital.  Average daily high/low temperatures range from 52°/35° on March 1 to 62°/43° by the end of the month.  That’s the largest monthly temperature spread of the year.

No month in the Nation’s Capital has a larger difference between the monthly record high (93° on March 23, 1907) and the monthly record low (4° on March 4, 1873) than March.  This month has already had a diverse first half with above average temperatures on eight of the first nine days.  However, that was followed by six consecutive cooler than average days through March 15, for the longest such streak since mid-November.

Large swings in temperature and precipitation are common in March as these examples illustrate:

2014:  Following a high of 70° on March 15, a major change occurred quickly in the Nation’s Capital.  A low of 31° occurred on March 16 shortly before midnight with accumulating snowfall that began that evening.  Before the snow ended on March 17, Washingtonians had a two-day storm total of 7.2”, giving DC residents their snowiest St. Patrick’s Day on record.  It also became DC’s 10^th largest March snowfall on record.  This storm bumped the “Superstorm of 1993” (6.6”) from the Top 10.  St. Patrick’s Day nine years ago was not only a snowy occasion in the Nation’s Capital but also a frigid one with a high temperature of only 32° just 48 hours after a high of 70°.

2012: Despite how snowy March 2014 was in the Nation’s Capital, DC’s warmest March on record occurred just two years earlier.  Low temperatures were at or below freezing on only two days in March 2012 compared to four days high temperatures reached the 80s.  That’s a significant total since Washington, D.C. has averaged only one March day in the 80s every other year over the last three decades, according to NOAA.

1990: One of the more extreme examples of how quickly and dramatically March weather can change in the Nation’s Capital happened in 1990.  An extremely cold day occurred on March 7 with a high/low of only 41°/22° at National Airport.  Merely five days later, however, there was a record high of 89° on March 12.  That was the first of five consecutive days with highs in the 80s and led to the earliest peak bloom of the world-famous cherry blossoms along the Tidal basin on March 15, according to the National Park Service.  Following a high temperature of 81° on March 16, the weather pendulum swung back to winter four days later when 0.4” of snow fell.