March 24, 2021

Forecast: March 24th, 2021

By Preston Donion

Welcome to your Wednesday, Huskies!

We’re officially into spring now, but you’ll have to take my word for it as we contend with some rather underwhelming temperatures for this late March period, topping out five or more degrees below average at Sea-Tac most days. Today won’t be particularly nice by most standards, with temperatures reaching nearly 50° amid a steady rain and some decent south winds at 10-15 mph. The good news, however, is that today looks to be the least springlike day in the next week!

We close out the work week on a slight warming trend, with temperatures cruising towards the mid-50s on Saturday. As an added bonus, the rain looks to clear out for the first half of the weekend, before it all comes back with the arrival of a new storm system on Sunday. There is considerable disagreement regarding the way this system crashes into the coast and how it will affect temperatures throughout the day, so keep an eye on the latest for a clearer picture.

Monday marks the beginning of Spring Quarter, and the beginning of another drying trend. By Tuesday, your post-class walk shouldn’t have puddles! We also see signs of temperatures returning to normal and even getting above average for the first week of the new quarter, so look forward to that as we push towards April!

As a statistical nerd, I want to leave you with one fun and intriguing trend for the month that’s on the way out: Average high temperatures for March (to date) have been just about on track with the historical average, coming in just one tenth of a degree under normal (53.1° vs 53.2°). Average lows, on the other hand, have come in 1.2° below the historical value, at 37.7°! In fact, at my personal station, the average low temperature in March has been lower than both January and February! It is certainly a fun quirk of our early 2021 weather trends, but far from record-worthy, with 1955 seeing month-to-date average highs of 44.3° and lows of 30.5°! Will we get similar extremes some time this year? Only time will tell. Enjoy the rest of your break and good luck as classes start up again!

Reach forecaster Preston Donion at theuwdawgcast@uw.edu. Twitter: @PrestonDonion

TODAY’S WIND GUSTS	24 HOUR RAIN TOTALS THROUGH ELEVEN TOMORROW