It's almost Spring. Monday, March 20th is the official first day of Spring. Those of us in the Northeast of course have had a great many number of spring like days this winter and not as much snow as usual with the weather pattern we had this winter. What kind of weather do we usually see in the spring and can we still see "snow"?

What causes the seasons to change?

The earth has 4 different seasons winter, spring, summer and fall. These different seasons are caused by the Earth's axis tilting. As the Earth moves around the sun this causes the axis to be either away from the sun for part of the year or toward the sun for part of the year. Spring is caused by the Northern Hemisphere being tilted more towards the sun. Which in turn cause the suns rays to shine directly on the Northern Hemisphere. The suns rays directly in an area causes greater heating than it would if the suns rays were tilted away from the area.


Can we still see snow and cold weather in the spring?

The answer to this question might not be the answer you wanted to hear if you are a person that loves the spring and the warmer weather. The answer to that question is "yes". Mother nature tends to "ignore" the seasons and do what she likes in the weather department sometimes. Spring is just a word and snow is still possible during the spring. While the chance for snow lessens the later we get into spring and the amounts lessen we can still see the white stuff in the spring as snowstorms have been reported in New England as late as April.


What kind of weather do we usually see in the spring?

Spring usually gets us thinking about birds chirping and flowers blooming. While this is true we also can see snowstorms and below normal cold temperatures in addition to rain and windy weather. The longer we are in the spring season usually the milder the weather becomes. As we head towards the months of May and June we will not see snow and the temperatures have warmed up and we usually do not see the freezing temperatures any longer.