Spring is the climatic equivalent of being a teenager!
Remember your teen years? Not a kid. Not an adult. Spring is similar. It’s not winter but also not summer. It has parts of each and they’re fighting like some sort of global hormonal imbalance.
We saw low 50s today. It still doesn’t feel like spring! Here’s the 4:00 PM observation from Bradley:
KBDL 021951Z 29012G24KT 260V320 10SM FEW060 BKN080 BKN200 11/M03 A2944 RMK AO2 PK WND 28027/1935 RAB09E20 SLP969 VCSH SE AND W-NW P0000 T01061028
Buried in that mess of digits is “RAB09E20.” It’s saying rain began at 3:09 PM and ended at 3:20. Just a trace fell. It was enough to make the low fifties underachieve.
Spring is a season of unstable airmasses. That’s especially true when it’s mild at groundlevel and cold up in the clouds. Parcels of air rising from the heat of the day become very buoyant which can lead to storminess.
The radar had that unstable look today. There were dozens… maybe hundreds of tiny individual showers between the Great Lakes and New England.
Tomorrow a stronger area of instability will move to the eastern edge of the Great Plains. There’s a chance of severe thunderstorms or even tornadoes from Lake Erie to the Rio Grande!
That system’s here Monday bringing rain and temperatures which will eerily continue rising long after the Sun’s gone down. The thunderstorms probably won’t make it this far east.
The rest of the week is up and down–not quite spring, not quite winter, though still the chance of a smidge of wintry weather. Not a lot. Not on the shoreline. Still, we’re in April for heaven’s sake.