Weathercatch: It’s spring? Depends on who you ask – and never mind the snow

Spring arrived Wednesday, at least for meteorologists and climatologists. Meteorological spring runs March 1 through May 31, a three-month period that marks the transition from the year’s three coldest months to its three warmest months.

So winter is over. Sort of. Although this week signifies an initial step toward warmer and brighter days, the atmosphere in March is prone to fits and starts as receding cold air masses moving south from northern Canada battle against expanding warm air masses from the subtropical Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

Not surprisingly, winter often takes its final breaths in March. Historical patterns show the Inland Northwest is almost as likely to experience a surge of cold or hefty batch of snow as it is mild temperatures and sunny skies. Spokane has received as cold as minus 10 degrees and as warm as 74 degrees.

If you’re wondering if it will snow this month, historical patterns say it’s highly probable.

Measurable snow has fallen in the city 112 out of 129 years, based on snowfall records dating to 1893. Spokane averages about 3.5 inches of snow during March. Some years, however, it’s a lot more.

Most recently, 6.4 inches fell in Spokane in March 2020 and 15.8 inches in 2008. The heaviest snowfall recorded in March is 16.4 inches, which occurred in 1897. No snow accumulated during the month in 2022 or 2021. With snow predicted Thursday, we can’t say the same about 2023.

As swiftly as snow typically arrives in March, a quick tease of springlike warmth melts it away. The seasonal switch makes it one of the most changeable months of the year, not only from week to week and day to day but also within a single day.

In March 2020, after almost two weeks of above-normal temperatures and mostly clear skies, Spokane received more than half a foot of snow March 13-14. During the remainder of the month, conditions teetered between mild and clear and cool and snowy until March 31, when almost every weather condition was unleashed in a single day: a glimpse of sunshine, snow flurries, rain, graupel, wind gusts, thunder and lightning and even a rare tornado near the Tri-Cities.

Regardless of how you define the start of spring – meteorologically on March 1 or astronomically on March 20, which is also known as the spring equinox – it marks a period of ever-evolving atmospheric conditions as persistent cold air masses clash with advancing warm air masses.

This March, the move toward steady spring weather will likely hit a flurry of speed bumps.

The month is projected to feature colder and wetter than average conditions across the Pacific Northwest, according to the latest outlook issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

Should the agency’s weather outlook hold true, we may still have some days when we roll down the car window, take a long bike ride or fly a kite. But we’ll also walk on slushy sidewalks, don winter gloves and retrieve the dusty umbrella.

As we approach the first weekend of March, there’s a chance of light snow Saturday night and Sunday, nothing like the 4-6 inches that blanketed the area on Tuesday . High temperatures are expected to run in the mid- to upper 30s, with overnight lows between 20-25 degrees.

Nic Loyd is a meteorologist in Washington state. Linda Weiford is a writer in Moscow, Idaho, who’s also a weather geek.