March Weather Recap for 2011

Maybe I should have called this blog, 'What went on with the weather in March and why anyone should care'. Few people actually read articles concerning stuff that was done to them in the past. Ask the average Joe on the street what the weather was a few days ago and he'll begin to do that squint things that people do when they been asked something that makes them uncomfortable. I could just as well as asked, 'Is that stain on your shirt of recent origin'?

The thing is, weather does play a major role in our lives whether we like it or not! String a few cold and overcast days together and many of us become a little bit depressed. When a month is colder than normal or predominantly overcast, this effect can become magnified. On the other side of the coin, if a month was warmer and sunnier than normal, then that can have a very good effect cumulatively. That's my theory at least.

This March 2011 was interesting in a number of respects. It was both warmer (by .9 of a degree) and wetter (by half an inch) that would be considered average if you took the last thirty years for comparison. This data was taken from the West Plains, Missouri data which is a little bit more accurate than the readings from Springfield, I feel. (Springfield, it should be noted was very similar to West Plain this time around).

Here is the raw data for West Plains. Mo.:

After the disaster that was the last three months in terms of rainfall or lack thereof, it was encouraging to see the drought in this area moderated a little bit. Following is a table showing the historical precipitation readings for the West Plains and Springfield, Missouri area:

Location	30 yr	W. Plains	SGF
Month	Avg	2011	2011
Jan	2.11	0.4	0.26
Feb	2.28	3.59	3.43
Mar	3.82	3.28	4.25
Apr	4.31
May	4.57
Jun	5.02
Jul	3.56
Aug	3.37
Sep	4.83
Oct	3.47
Nov	4.46
Dec	3.17
Total	44.97	-0.94	-0.27

While we did have plenty of rain this month and last, January only recorded a miserly 0.40 in West Plains and 0.26 of an inch in Springfield! So, while February and March did help dig us out of a rainfall hole, we finished the month still behind. If we do get a lot of rainfall in April, so much to the good.

Temperatures in the area were a little bit below historical standards when averaged for the three month period for both reporting stations.

Month	Mean	W. Plains	SGF
Jan	31.7	31	29.8
Feb	37.1	37.8	34.3
Mar	46.4	47.3	46.6
Apr	55.7
May	64.7
Jun	73.4
Jul	78.5
Aug	77.6
Sep	69.3
Oct	58.4
Nov	45.9
Dec	35.7