Apr 27, 2022 3 min read

Here we are almost at the end of April, and I once again find myself wondering where the time has gone.

We finally managed to mow the lawn for the first time this year, and I realized it’s just about that time in early April each year that I fire up the mower for the first cut. This year, the grass just kept growing and growing in between drenching downpours that it became thick and green and high … but it just kept raining.

Even when we had a day with a break in the precipitation, the grass was too much of a soggy quagmire to even think of dragging the lawnmower through it. The temperature was on so much of a roller coaster that even though I longed for warmer weather, I kept hoping (in a way) that the cooler air would keep the grass from growing much higher until the rain would stop.

March ended up being quite the strange month weather-wise for the Greater Pittsburgh region. Consider these weird facts:

• Pittsburgh tied for the 16th most days with 60-plus degree weather.
• Recorded first confirmed tornado in March in the Pittsburgh forecast area since 2011 with an EF-2 touching down in Armstrong County on March 31.
• 8th SNOWIEST March on record (17.1″) for Pittsburgh, which is the most since 1993.
• Despite all that snow, the temperature departure for March 2022 was 3 degrees above normal.
• The first half of April swung in the other direction with temperatures averaging just a little over one degree below normal.

In the final week of March alone, Southwestern Pennsylvania had snow squalls on Monday, sunshine on Tuesday with highs in the 40s, sunshine and 70-degree temperatures on Wednesday, severe thunderstorms and that tornado on Thursday and snow showers again on that Friday. On March 30, Pittsburgh went from a low temperature of 32 degrees to a high of 75 degrees … that’s a 43-degree difference in one day! That marked only the 176th time that big of a temperature swing has happened since 1875, meaning there’s only an 0.03% chance of that occurring on any given day. Weird, wild stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say!

As for our seemingly never-ending stretch of rainy days, here are some other interesting numbers:

• Pittsburgh recorded at least a trace of precipitation 22 out of 31 days in March.
• April kept the soggy trend going with at least a trace of precipitation recorded in 13 out of the first 15 days.

As we head into May, let’s hope the roller coaster of temperatures we’ve been on this spring will give us a break and let us have some steady, pleasant, seasonable temperatures with a stretch of nice, pleasant, sunny days. If April showers bring May flowers, we should certainly be full of blooms this next month!

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.