TOLEDO, Ohio -
Welcome to March!
Meteorologists and weather enthusiasts sometimes follow a slightly different calendar, when it comes to the seasons.
Technically, spring doesn't begin until March 20th.
However, March first marks the beginning of "meteorological spring".
That's right, meteorological winter - which runs through the three months of December, January and February, has ended.
By the numbers, this most recent winter has been a bit wetter and milder than average.
From a temperature standpoint, we got off to a very mild start, when December ended 5.6° above normal.
January was 2.5° milder than average.
On the other hand, February was 1.5° colder than the long-term average in Toledo.
The net effect is that this most recent meteorological winter ran 2.3° milder than average.
The past three months were also wetter than normal.
After a relatively dry December, January and February were both wetter than average, so the end result was 1.79" more precipitation than normal.
In the snowfall department, Toledo averages 28.4" of snow in the typical December / January / February.
This year, we had 22.5" of snow in that time period... 5.9" below normal.
More than half of that fell in February.
After a quiet December and January, February brought more than a foot of snow, with a 3" surplus for the final month of meteorological winter.
Meteorological spring is starting unseasonably cold, with highs 10-12 degrees below average during the first two days of the new month.
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