Looking back at March 2022 in the Duluth area, temperatures were just 3 degrees below normal, yet precipitation was only about half what we usually receive.
Today is the first day of April and, as Larry Weber says, "April is a strange, strange month." Consider this: The snowfall in April 2013 totaled a record-setting 50.8 inches. Three years earlier, April 2010, there was no snow at all. But Larry also refers to April as the "thawing month"; average temps for the month are about 40 degrees, so we could expect a lot of thawing in the coming few weeks. Rivers have already started to flow and, if April does indeed have normal temps, the ponds, swamps, and lakes should lose their ice as well.
Larry believes we are having a late spring, noting that he has yet to see any chipmunks, nor red-winged blackbirds, woodcocks, ruffed grouse, or dandelions, all earlier indications of spring's arrival. On the other hand, as Larry points, out, a later spring also means a delay in the arrival of ticks and mosquitoes.
