Spring is springing: For meteorologists, spring starts March 1

By Jennifer Gray, CNN meteorologist

For meteorologists, spring starts Tuesday. But if you Google the word “spring,” the response is March 20.

You have not gone through a time warp. Tuesday is not March 20. It is March 1. And Google isn’t wrong. Astronomical spring (based on Earth’s rotation around the sun) is on the vernal or spring equinox.

But in the meteorological world, spring begins March 1.

“Meteorologists and climatologists break the seasons down into groupings of three months based on the annual temperature cycle as well as our calendar,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explained.

The groupings make it much easier to calculate seasonal statistics from the monthly statistics.

One thing you may not know is what happens in the winter months can impact what happens in spring to a certain extent.

Will a dry winter lead to a dry spring? Or will a cold and snowy winter lead to a cooler spring?

<p>The first day of meteorological spring on Tuesday will feel above average for many across the nation.</p>

CNN Weather

The first day of meteorological spring on Tuesday will feel above average for many across the nation.

There is no doubt this winter has been brutal for some. Across the northern tier of the country, an already cold region, temperatures were well below seasonal norms.

John Gottschalck is chief of the operational prediction branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC). He’s one of the experts coming up with the long-range forecast, and to come up with a forecast, you need to look at the past.

He noted one of the things standing out to him from the winter was the relentless rain falling across the mid-Mississippi River Valley, resulting in flooding.

In the West, lots of rain fell early in the season, but shut off when California was supposed to get its peak rainfall, causing the region to end the season well below normal.

Gottschalck acknowledged how wet or dry a region is currently could have an impact on the next three months.

He explained the soil moisture of a region can play into the temperatures longer-term, meaning if an area is very wet, its temperatures could end up a little cooler. By contrast, if an area is exceptionally dry, its temperatures could end up slightly above normal.

“Lots of surface water, whether it be from any flooding, or just higher rivers, or just soil moisture above normal can tend to keep the temperatures below normal or lower than they would normally be,” Gottschalck outlined. “Certain areas that have been quite dry, for example, are going to get a little bit of a bump up, potentially, for above normal temperatures.”

A case in point: California. We were all optimistic early in the season with all the rainfall received there in December, and then, nothing, proving how quickly things can change for the better or the worse.

“We had all that excitement about drought improvement and there was definitely a lot in the West, early on in December,” Gottschalck recounted. “But right now, if you look at the 90-day departures for normal, Northern California and Oregon are considerably below normal the last two months, so that actually trumped.”

Moving forward, California could pick up where it left off, with a continuation of a drier and warmer pattern, as could Texas.

“Texas had one of its hottest Decembers ever,” Gottschalck reported. “Those conditions will play some role in the outlook moving forward, because that feedback can produce warmer temperatures.”

One thing to note is the continuation of the La Niña pattern, a phenomenon where cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures occur in the Pacific near the equator. It impacts weather all over the globe, including an increase in Atlantic hurricanes.

Learn more about La Niña

La Niña influenced this winter, including the early season rain events in the West, colder-than-normal temperatures across the north, and warmer-than-normal conditions in the south.

“The La Niña pattern often produces cold in the Pacific Northwest and along the West Coast, and even into the northern Plains, and that can linger well into March,” Gottschalck pointed out. “If that lingers further into March, it may be a colder start more like La Niña in the early part of the spring.”

Gottschalck added we will start to move away from a La Niña pattern later in the spring.

“As you enter into more neutral conditions, you lose some of your climate reliability, forecasting-wise,” Gottschalck explained.

“We start to focus a little bit on where we have deficits and or surpluses in snow cover and snow water equivalent and soil moisture in the springtime, because those can feed back to the atmospheric temperature,” Gottschalck emphasized.

Places like the Ohio Valley and Tennessee Valley will likely stay on the cooler side, partly because of all the rain they have received.

And as we know, these outlooks are for the season as a whole. There will be ups and downs, wet periods and dry ones all within the season.

But spring is right around the corner, no matter when you consider spring to “officially” begin.

Back on Groundhog Day, famous rodent Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. Here’s a bunch of pictures of groundhogs and their handlers:

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