March 2019 Summary

A cold and wet March that was mostly warm and dry (how did that happen?)

March was a month with many different faces. 

Starting with temperature, the first 9 days of the month were very cold, there were some days where the high temperatures were lower than the average low temperatures for those days.  Starting on the 10th, the temperature really rebounded, in fact if you take out those first 9 days, the rest of the month was about a degree above average.  However, we have to consider all the days and those first ones were so cold that it brought the overall temperature for March down to almost 1.5 degrees below average.

For precipitation, the little we saw in the first 29 days was on the way to becoming one of the driest of all time.  But once again, March threw us a curveball and on the last two days of the month we saw 41.8 mm of the month’s total precipitation of 63.6 mm.  This was just barely enough to get the month into the above average range by less than half a millimetre.

Part of that precipitation in the last few days came in the form of snow with 13 cm coming down, while the total of the month was only 17 cm.  This puts us at 133.5 cm for the snowfall season and the question remains if there will we see any more to get us closer to the average of 159.7 cm for entire season.

Summary for March 2019:
Maximum Temperature 11.0°C
Minimum Temperature -21.2°C
Average Daily High Temperature 2.6°C (Long term average 3.6°C)
Average Daily Low Temperature -7.3°C (Long term average -5.6°C)
Total Precipitation 63.6 mm (Long term average 61.0 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1981-2010 data for the Waterloo-Wellington Airport)