March 2013 did a big turnaround for March of last year. State climatologist Harry Hillaker, says March of 2012 was much warmer than normal — but that wasn’t the case this year.
“Preliminarily, temperatures averaging about seven degrees colder than usual,” Hillaker says. He says we have to go back all the way to 1984 to find a colder March, and possibly further back once all the data comes in. The cold in March brought along a bunch of snow too.
“Actually, the snowiest March since 1998 — the state average was about 9.8-inches — which is a little more than double what’s normal for the month, and so cold and snowy. And as far as precipitation in general for a state average, just barely above normal for the month — roughly about 2.2-inches of precipitation this month,” Hillaker says.
The precipitation for the month kept a positive wet trend going.”It would be the fourth consecutive month that our state average precipitation has actually been above normal,” Hillaker says.
“We haven’t put a streak together like that for quite some time. None of those months really were exceptionally wet, but at least its kind of in the director we want to be going with the ongoing long-term drought conditions that we’re still trying to overcome.”
Hillaker says the weather for Iowa in April could be warm and wet according to early predictions.
By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City