Spring Backward? For Many, April Was Cooler than March

[Dead_Parrot]

As we reported on April 26, the extraordinarily mild weather during March accomplished an unprecedented feat in many parts of the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains, where April temperatures turned out to be cooler than March. In the Northeast, the average temperature during March was warmer than April in locations such as Scranton, Pa., and at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C., the first time this has happened there. It was also the first time this has occurred in Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, New York since records began in the late nineteenth century.

“March 2012 was a record-breaking month, breaking more than 15,000 temperature records across the United States. A month later, March’s heat is still breaking records," said Jessica Rennells, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, in a press release. (Explore the March records and more using Climate Central's Record Temperature Tracker.)

The decline in temperature from March to April is particularly remarkable because April was also a warmer-than-average month in the Northeast and Midwest. In Chicago, for example, April was cooler than March for just the second time on record, despite the fact that April was the seventh-straight month with above average temperatures there.

"Longer days and more direct sunlight make that a difficult feat — yet for only the second time in 142 years of weather records, it's happened," wrote WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling on his blog.

More: http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/spring-backward-for-many-april-was-cooler-than-march/