We are near the midpoint of climatological spring. I’m Mike Davis, and I’m talking with climatologist Corey Davis about this. Corey, it seems like we’ve been in spring for quite a while though.
“Yeah, it really does. Mike, it’s hard to believe it’s only a month and a half into the season because when you remember back to February, we started getting into those spring-like temperatures where we had temperatures well into the 60s and 70s back in mid- to late-February thus far this spring.”
Farmers have to be pretty happy with the conditions.
“Yeah, exactly. Mike, I think especially now that we’re past that last freeze date, and we have started getting some warmer weather here in the first couple of weeks of April. And even with the drier weather we’ve had that’s good news for farmers because they are now able to get out in the fields for their planting. The one thing we’ve heard this having a little bit of a negative impact is some of those windy days because that is drying out the top layer of the soil a little bit more quickly than they might like.”
Let’s take a look at the forecast now as we move over the next week or so. How does that look, continued warm?
“Especially today we will be warmer again well into the mid to upper 80s But this afternoon we’ll see a better chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms. There is a cold front that’s moving in from the west. So that will help kick off more of that shower activity. Tomorrow we’ll still be fairly warm highs right around 80 degrees again with a chance of scattered showers and storms and then finally we’ll see some cooler air moving in by Sunday. Our highs will only be in the 60s then and especially in the eastern part of North and South Carolina. We’ll see better rain chances by Sunday night and then overnight into Monday morning as low pressure forms off the coast. So looking at potential totals of half inch to an inch in many areas, but especially right around Greenville, Goldsboro, Kinston and eastern North Carolina some of those spots that haven’t seen the rain that they would have liked for the spring. This could be a solid event for them to make up for some of those deficits.”