Rick Shields Ag Weather 2-22-10

As the snow winds down today we have a chance for still another round coming up in about a day.  The low which gave some folks up to eight or nine inches is headed for Cleveland this evening with its next target being interior New England.  An upper level system will give us a round of accumulating snow Tuesday night into Wednesday.  Then colder air moves in to keep our highs a couple of degrees cooler than we’ve seen for the past few weeks.  We’re still not looking at really arctic conditions in this last week of February.

A decade ago late February actually got balmy across the region.  Many high temperature records fell in 2000 along with warm morning low readings.  That’s the kind of too much of a good thing too soon that fruit growers worry about as plants react by breaking winter dormancy only to later get nipped by the cold.

As that long list of Monday school closings will attest, we’re not getting ahead of ourselves weather-wise this year.

The bottom line – late-February cold will hang around through the week and we’ll have several periods of snow and snow showers but nothing which should put a halt to activities after today.