SIX PIX FOR 3/26/06


From: Kylie Heyer
from Fargo, ND

Kylie emailed in a beautiful moment before what turned into a nasty little thunderstorm that moved through the Fargo area a couple of summers ago. This particular storm, like most, flooded local streets and neighborhoods temporarily and brought on quite a lightning show.

Yesterday was a beautiful Easter day as there was plenty of sunshine, little wind (can I say little wind again?), and temperatures were in the middle 70s. I’ve already been asked several times, was that the best Easter ever or the warmest? It wasn’t the warmest, back in 1987 during that year’s extremely warm spring, it was 86 degrees on Easter Sunday, the best, well, that’s always a matter of opinion, but it was certainly better than most.

As everyone knows, Easter falls on a different day each year, so unlike Christmas, it’s harder to look up Easter stats in a weather almanac. This definition isn’t exactly correct, but comes close enough, but Easter generally falls on the first Sunday, after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. (If you want the whole story and the precise definition when Easter falls go to this link: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.html ) This means Easter can fall on any day from March 21 to April 25.

If you live in North Dakota or northern Minnesota, obviously the later in the year Easter falls, the better the odds of the weather being sunny and nice like it was yesterday. I did look up the Easter weather from 1990 to 2006 and of those days, only three were in the 70s. The good news about recent Easter days is that only one has had measureable snow since 1990 (in 2002), but if you look at the list below, you’ll notice many "lousy" Easter Sundays.

If you’re curious about all the Easter Sunday’s on record, you can check on this site to get the Easter day: http://www.assa.org.au/edm.html

Then go to the WDAY Weather Almanac page (http://www.wday.com/almanac.cfm) to find out what the weather was on that particular Easter.

List of Easter Weather since 1990:

                                          High         Low         Precip         Snow
1990: April 15                        62             20
1991: March 31                      55             28
1992: April 19                        57             32            0.02"
1993: April 11                        48             36            0.03"
1994: April 3                          54            28             0.01"
1995: April 16                        42             34
1996: April 7                          38             26
1997: March 30                       34            23
1998: April 12                         71            54
1999: April 4                          43             30            0.02"
2000: April 23                         72             37
2001: April 15                         43             23
2002: March 31                       35             18                            0.4"
2003: April 20                         61             32
2004: April 11                         35             17                          Trace
2005: March 27                       56             30
2006: April 16                         77             50

If you’re like me, you tend to remember the bad days, not the nice days, therefore, you may think that March was a cold month. Actually, it finished above average by 0.2 degrees. OK, two-tenths of a degree isn’t much above average, it is average, but it certainly was not a cold month as you may have thought. We did have a stretch of 14 days in the middle of the month when the daily average temperature was below average, but the first few days of the month were well above average and the last week of the month also was warm enough to get the mean monthly temperature up above average. It was the last week of March and the warm temperatures that unfortunately caused the rapid snow melt and most of our flooding problems in the area.

Precipitation wise, it was a very average month, as we finished 0.05" above average, so like the air temperature, it was pretty much exactly an average month, although, snowfall was an inch or two below the long term average. 

Speaking of snow, if you’re curious, we’ve had  41.7 inches of snow in Fargo/Moorhead this past snow season, with 44.6 inches being the average, so we’re actually 3" below average at the moment and if by chance we go through April without snow (which is unusual, but we managed to do it last year) we would finish the snow season 6" below the 30 year average.