Finally, Washington is enjoying a few beautiful spring days, with highs in the 70s, low humidity and no threat of rain. Until this week, such days had been scarce.
Spring was essentially skipped this year. March and April, both of which were colder than normal, felt more like winter. Then we leaped to our third-warmest and sixth-wettest May on record, which felt more like summer.
Available weather data make it clear that nice spring weather has shortchanged us.
Since 2000, Washington has averaged 25 days per spring with highs in the 70s from March to early June. This year, we’ve seen 17, which ranks second-fewest. In other words, we’ve missed more than a week of days in the 70s.
Of Washington’s 17 days in the 70s so far this spring, it has rained on five, reducing the count of truly nice days to 12. But it gets worse: Only three of those 12 nice days have coincided with the weekend.
The only year with worse spring circumstances was 2013. That year had 16 days with highs in the 70s, and it rained on seven of them. Of the nine remaining nice days, four occurred on the weekend.
So if rain-free days in the 70s is your measure of a nice spring, this year clearly is near the bottom of the barrel. When you also consider that eight to 15 inches of rain have drenched us since early May, it puts a lock on the season’s lowly status.
2016 might place as a runner-up among the most miserable recent springs, thanks to what we called the worst May ever at the time. It rained on 19 of the month’s first 23 days. But that year had more nice days in March and April.
Spring’s saving grace this year may be the forecast for the first half of June. Weather models generally forecast highs near normal around the low-to-mid 80s. While this isn’t quite the 70s, it’s still pretty pleasant.
Of course, we’ll have to see how much it rains, which is difficult to project more than a few days into the future.