Is it finally safe to put away your winter gear? Here’s what 3 local meteorologists think.
New England's weather has kept residents on their toes for the last two months. What comes next?
New Englanders can’t complain about living in a region where all four seasons come and go. It’s just that some of them tend to overstay their welcome at times.
OK, it’s really just one of them.
After a relentlessly stormy March and an unseasonably cold start to April, this past weekend brought some overdue spring weather to the Boston area. But can local residents put away the winter gear for good?
“I probably would,” Lenore Correia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Monday.
Correia noted that the service’s seven-day forecast — which shows highs consistently in the 60s — is limited. But she said longer-term estimates from the service’s Weather Prediction Center suggested those temperatures should remain steady, even if we wake up to a few more chilly mornings.
WBZ chief meteorologist Eric Fisher was a bit less wavering in his expectations for the coming months.
“Winter is dead,” Fisher declared.
Only a “seriously freak event,” such as the infamous May 10, 1977 blizzard, could bring it back to life now. But Fisher says it doesn’t make much sense to prepare for such a possibility.
“In fact, we may fast-forward to summer next week, which has been the hunch of many a New Englander with this very slow start to the season,” he told Boston.com. “It so often feels like a cold early spring snaps right into summer-like weather when it finally turns.”
If the pattern holds, Fisher said we could even see several days in the 70s or 80s next week.
WCVB’s chief meteorologist, Harvey Leonard, a longtime Boston TV staple, says he remains wary about those freak springtime snowstorms. After all, 500,000 people lost power in that 1977 storm, and many areas got hit with a foot of snow. Princeton topped out at 20 inches.
“The National Guard was called in to help,” Leonard told Boston.com.
He also recalls a May 18 snowstorm sometime in the early 2000s, in which Boston was hit with sleet, while more northern parts of Massachusetts received an inch of snow.
“Usually I say it is not completely safe until May 19th,” Leonard said. “However, as I look ahead at the weather pattern that we are likely to be in, I do not see a repeat of anything like what I just mentioned.”
Despite the expected rainstorm Wednesday and a few more nights in the 30s, Leonard says he doesn’t expect that sort of cold to last during the daylight hours, and thus he says he has put away his winter coat and shovel.
“I think it is very likely we have seen the last of the snow for this spring season,” he said.
The only one not quite committed to closeting his winter jacket for the season was Fisher. But his decision has more to do with cold air coming off the coast than it does with any expectations of a cruel reversion back to winter.
“I wouldn’t put it away yet particularly near the coast,” he said. “My M.O. is that until the ocean warms up, there are days when the winter jackets are going to come in handy.”
