Weather Eye: Swinging toward spring, from 60ish to snow and back

I guess the first day of March came in like maybe a white lamb rather than a lion, with the general snowfall Clark County woke up to. Unless you slept in, that is.

The nice thing about snow this time of the year is, it generally falls overnight and is gone in a wink of the eye. In this case, the higher elevations around our area had anywhere from 6 to 18 inches of snow as reported to me from our local weather watchers.

March can be highly variable, with temperatures in the 30s one day and 60 degrees a day or two later. That was the case this weekend highs bumped 60 degrees Saturday in some neighborhoods and probably will as well on Sunday.

Another cold trough of low pressure pays a visit later Monday and Tuesday, with snow levels dropping back down to the foothills. Maybe a few wet flakes mixed in the lowlands? We should be safe at city levels, with just chilly showers.

The weather pattern will be progressive, so any cold weather will not last.

It won’t be long before a “normal” March would bring highs well into the 60s, but we all know what normal means just an average of extremes.

Rainfall (and snowfall) reports are ending up in my email box from around the area, and we will share those this week. Officially, February was drier than normal in Vancouver and temperatures were just about at average.

I leave you with this, from gardener Thalassa Cruso: “March is a month of considerable frustration it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away.”

Patrick Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at http://weathersystems.com.