SOME INTERESTING MARCH CLIMO STATS

Written by: Bob Metcalfe

I took a look at the monthly climatology for this month in Rochester and was pretty astounded (but not surprised) by what I saw. As you all know, we have not had ANY snow so far this month, and sunshine has been the dominant factor in our sky rather than clouds. As Scott mentioned, we are over 8 degrees above normal for the month. That's a ridiculous amount!

Here's what else I conjured up:

Out of the 19 days completed, 6 were considered clear, 6 were considered partly cloudy, and just 7 cloudy. That means that we're having almost double the amount of good days compared to bad. RARE for March!

We've only had 466 heating degree days so far this month. That's a whopping 164 less than normal, almost unheard of. HDD are used by energy companies to gauge weather/heat use as compared to norms. Basically, RG&E bills have been MUCH less so far this month.

We're also still in the running for one of the top 10 driest March's on record, but the coming rain on Monday/Tuesday may put the kibosh to that pretty quickly. Early model data suggests that we could get over half an inch of rain with the strong potential for more than that.

But no matter how you look at it, this month has been uncharacteristic of March in Rochester. Tons of sun, tons of dry, and extremely mild air have been the rule. It looks as though our snow chances are dropping by the minute.