Why has Spring Been So Cold in the St. Cloud area?

(KNSI) – It might be spring according to the calendar, but Mother Nature begs to differ.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Brent Hewitt told KNSI News it’s not your imagination, and the season is off to a cold start. “And if you look outside, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s keeping us colder, when we have a pretty impressive snowpack like we had this winter. And without any huge spike ups in temperature to melt that off.”

He said the snowpack acts as a cooler despite the increasing sun angle. Central Minnesota has anywhere from six to 12 plus inches of snow. “That’s not the only factor. We’ve been in a kind of a Northwest flow, meaning we get a lot of our air mass from central Canada, where they still have plenty of cold air in place as well. So we really haven’t seen any good shots of warmer weather over the last month.”

Hewitt says the nation is coming out of a two-year La Nina pattern, and historically that usually warms up the region pretty quickly due to more influence from the Gulf of Mexico.

Looking ahead in the forecast, meteorologists expect April to be colder and wetter than normal. Hewitt says temperatures will remain below normal in May and June with above-normal rainfall.

The St. Cloud area is in line for more snow Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning. This season has been the second snowiest in St. Cloud, with 79 inches. The record is 87.9 inches, set in 1964-1965.

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