Jennifer Edwards Baker reports:
Spring officially arrived at 7:02 a.m.
But you wouldn’t know it by stepping outside.
In fact, this first day of spring will be colder than the last day of winter on Tuesday, when the mercury topped out at 45 degrees, according the National Weather Service in Wilmington.
It’s 32 degrees with a wind chill of 26 this morning at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The high temperature later will only top out at 38 under mostly sunny but breezy conditions.
A blast of cold air from Canada and the northwest is keeping our region colder than normal over the next several days. Our normal daytime highs for this time of year is 54 degrees.
By comparison, on this date last year, we were breaking records with a high of 83 degrees. March 2012 was the warmest on record.
- Cincinnati.com’s weather page with interactive radar, 7-day and hourly forecasts & more!
- National Weather Service: West Chester 7-day forecast
- AccuWeather.com: West Chester extended forecast
As frigid as this day is, it’s not the coldest March 20 or start of spring on that date in record, the weather service says. That was in 1885, when the high only mustered to a mere 19 degrees.
Thursday’s forecast calls for even colder temperatures than today, with mercury barely breaking 36 degrees, before finally pushing into the 40s on Friday through at least early next week.
Overnight lows will be in the 20s.
As the winter of 2012-13 winds down, snowfall totals wound up just being over the annual average, according to the weather service.
A total of 21.9 inches fell this year, up just a bit from the average snowfall in a given winter of 20.8 inches.
By comparison, last winter – one of the warmest on record – saw just 5.6 inches.
