Weather mailbag: Has spring arrived early? Is La Niña over?
Q: Are we in an El Niño, La Niña, or transition? What does this mean for the rest of spring and summer?
— Michael S., Upton
A
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We are now seeing a transition from La Niña to 'neutral' conditions, which means sea-surface temperatures and winds across the equatorial Pacific off the west coast of South America are close to their long-term average.
All signs point to this neutral pattern sticking around through the summer, which actually makes it a little tougher to predict how things will fare with our temperatures and precipitation over the next several months. El Niño and La Niña offer clues to how our pattern typically unfolds, and when there is no dominant pattern like that in place, the level of variability in our localized weather patterns increases, meaning that it's a bit of a coin flip as to what kind of weather we will see. The last time we saw a
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It's also worth noting that the average sea-surface temperature across the northern Atlantic Ocean is nearly a half-degree cooler than last year, which could result in less intense coastal storms that might develop this spring and into summer. But keep in mind, the ocean is still very much warmer than the climatological average.
Q: I'm excited for spring to be here, but looking back, could it ever be too cold to snow?
— Carl P., Hingham
Hopefully, we're done with snow for the season, and we can look forward to increased sunshine and time spent outdoors. But this is a very interesting question, and one I hear occasionally.
There really isn't an environment on Earth where it would be too cold for it to snow because the atmosphere always holds some level of moisture, which plays a larger role in snow formation than temperature. However, the colder it gets, the harder it is for snow to form.
Snow forms, of course, when the atmosphere is cold enough and filled with enough moisture for crystals to form. It doesn't snow often when temperatures fall below zero because usually air that cold doesn't hold much moisture to condense out. Local weather patterns can certainly make it snow with temperatures below zero, but the shape of the snow changes. The colder it is, the less snow crystals can grow, leading to fine snow pellets versus large fluffy snowflakes.
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The coldest place on Earth away from Antarctica still sees snow at times. In Oymyakon in eastern Siberia, where winter temperatures average -58 degrees, it still snows.
Q: I'm seeing some flowers bloom now and wanted to know if first leaf and bloom have occurred early this year?
— Stacy N., Taunton
New England saw quite a
Some new data from the
This map shows how far spring leaf out has spread north across the country, as of April 2.
National Phenology Network
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