HOUSTON – With the Vernal Equinox only being one week away, one question the Storm Tracker 2 Meteorologists have been asked a lot is, “Are we done with winter?”
The short answer is yes.
So, here’s what’s going on above us.
As we get further into the month of March, the atmosphere continues to heat up. This is due to the Earth shifting on its axis, as the Northern Hemisphere will become tilted more towards the sun allowing for more daylight and incoming solar radiation to hit our side of the hemisphere.
We also start seeing more southerly flow coming from the Gulf, which brings warm, moist air into our area more frequently.
Spring does tend to be a dynamic and turbulent time, weather-wise.
Even though us in Houston are coming out of winter, the northern portions of the United States and Canada still experience the cold and snow.
At this point, the jet stream is still amplified and brings those colder systems from the north and west down into our area. These colder systems clash with the warm, moist air overhead.
Those systems can pack a punch, bringing colder than average air down into SE Texas.
We saw this recently in both our lows and highs, as multiple cold fronts have pulled below-average temperatures into Houston - shown here in the blue boxes, where it felt more like winter than spring.
The good news is that those colder temperatures don’t last as long, nor do they happen as frequently in the month of March. The latest date in March that has seen temperatures below 32° was back on March 13th, 2022.
Here’s what our normal should be for the month of March!
Now, that’s not to say that we won’t see temperatures dip below average.
In fact, there’s a couple of mornings in the 10-day forecast where we could see temperatures fall below average by a few degrees as multiple systems work their way to Houston.
If you take the average, though, we are above average through the extended period as spring continues to dominate.