The high temperature for the five days before Thursday averaged 53° in Providence. Even with that warm stretch, the month is still running more than 4° colder than normal. Unfortunately, there is no huge warm-up on the horizon in the next couple of weeks. In fact, there is a decent chance that the month is colder relative to normal than any of the chilly months that preceded ti from November through February.
The weekend looks up and down temperature-wise. Mild on Saturday, cool on Sunday. We are keeping a very close eye on the storm potential for Monday. The models have trended north with the system in the past 24 hours. At this point, confidence is increasing in some snow on Monday, but, it is still too early to say if it will be heavy enough to stick. As we saw today, at this time of the year it really needs to come down to stick to the pavement because of the high sun angle. Late this morning it was 17° and snowing, but melting on contact due to the light intensity of the snow and the high mid-March sun angle.
Regardless of whether the storm brings snow, it will be cold in the early to middle part of next week. By late next week it should get mild enough for rain showers to threaten. A cold front will pass through with the chance of rain, followed by another cold shot next weekend or early the following week. The overall pattern for the last full week of March is for an unseasonable chill in the northern half of the country – where we live! Lucky us!
