Is this the Coldest Spring Ever in the Inland NW?

The most-talked about topic lately has to be the cold spring we're having this year in the Inland Northwest.  Have we ever had a spring this cold?  What is causing this?  Will it ever warm up?

First we'll talk about what has happened.  Here's a time-series of temperatures at Spokane Airport from January 1st through mid-May.  A little explanation for those who are not used to this style of graph.  The blue bars show the high and low temperature each day.  The brown area is the range where the temperatures are normal for that day.  If the blue bar extends above the brown area, into the red area, then that day was warmer than normal.  If the blue bar is below the brown region, into the light blue area, then that day was colder than normal.

As you can see from the graph above, temperatures in Spokane for January through March were generally at or above normal (in the brown or red shaded area), with the exception of the cold snap in late February.  But then in early April, the blue bars took a significant dip, and since then, they've been generally been in the brown (normal) or blue (below normal) territory.

Here's another way to look at our spring, with a bit larger view.  March was very mild across the entire lower 48 states.  For some counties, the temperatures were in the Much Above Average category, including Spokane County. 

April was a much different story for the country.  The Pacific NW had Much Below Average temperatures, as did Montana to Wisconsin.  Notice that a few Washington counties (Lincoln, Grant, Benton and Walla Walla) had their coldest April ever.  That's an impressive record considering that records go back to 1895, or 127 years.  Meanwhile, it was much warmer than normal across the southern states in April.

For you weather buffs, when we see colder-than-normal across the north, and warmer-than-normal across that south, that will typically mean windier-than-normal weather in the area in between.  And in fact, it has been very windy this spring in the southern/central plains, from Texas to Nebraska.

Of course, all of this cold weather has resulted in some unusual events.  Hard to plant a garden when there's still frost in the forecast. The most impressive was probably the heavy snow in the Wenatchee area on April 14th.

And of course, there's the "first 70°F day" record for Spokane.  While Felts Field near downtown Spokane has hit 70°F twice this spring, Spokane Airport, the official observation site, yet to reach the 70°F reading.  How unusual is this?  Actually, it's never happened before in the 75 years of the Spokane International Airport.  Typically Spokane Airport will have reached 70°F by April 18th.  

Before this year, the record for the latest first 70°F day was all the way back in....2011, when we didn't reach 70°F until May 11th.  What's more interesting, that same year of 2011 it took until June 22 to reach the first 80°F day, which was also a record.  

So why all the cold weather?  La Nina is the most likely culprit.  Cool weather in the northwest U.S. fits the pattern of most La Nina's, especially in the spring.

For the first 3 months of 2022, the jet stream (black line) was being deflected up and over the Pac NW, leaving us on the warm side of the jet.

Then in late March and early April, the pattern changed considerably.  The jet stream was generally south of us, leaving us on the cold side of the jet.

So what does this mean for our upcoming summer?  The official outlook from the Climate Prediction Center shows above normal temperatures for June-July-August, but the center of this heat is well to the south and west of the Pac NW.

The computer forecasts for this period show a similar outlook, with the largest anomalies over the West, but not so much over in Pac NW.

As we've already seen, the spring of 2011 was rather similar to our current spring.  So of course this begs the question, what was the summer of 2011 like?  Now, using another year as an analog is often risky business.  But 2011 was a La Nina year, similar to 2022.  First, here's how April 2011 turned out as far as temperatures.  If you compare it to the April 2022 ranks at the start of this blog, there's a lot of similarities.

The cool weather persisted in the West during June of 2011, while Texas had it's hottest June ever. 

July wasn't much different, with the West staying cooler than normal, the East was warmer than normal and Texas and Oklahoma were still hot.

But by August, the pattern had changed a bit, with temperatures more typical for summer in the West, while the Southwest continued to sizzle.

Lastly, September was quite different from the summer, with very warm conditions in the West and Northeast.