Is it safe to start your spring garden?

Over the next 10 days, our temperatures will likely remain above normal and some of us won't even dip below freezing during the night. My suspicion is that some will look at a 10 day forecast (and because we are in March now) think that winter is history. Spring does begin in less than 2 weeks.

However, as we pointed out last week in the March outlook, another surge of colder weather is expected during the second half of the month. This is now showing up on the models.

Right around St Patrick's Day, we could be tracking another shot of much chillier air. How long it will hang around isn't clear, but if you get overly ambitious, a few cold nights may get you in trouble. So be patient because March is notorious for throwing us a curve ball and I do expect more nights where we will drop into the 20s.

The average last spring frost/freeze isn't until April anyway, so more sub-freezing temperatures wouldn't be out-of-line. 

I'm also still anticipating a more active stretch coming up for the second half of March. We've had some rather tranquil weather to start the month (in Kansas anyway), but I expect that will begin to change soon. And a couple of storms could be in the works around or just after St. Patrick's Day, so our chances for more moisture look to be increasing on a little larger scale coming up in the next 2-3 weeks. Stay tuned.

Sunday night/early Monday rain:
Still not expected to be a significant amount of moisture, but up to .25" for some areas (mainly east), and the rain should be gone by mid-morning Monday. None of this will be snow though - too warm for that.

Have a great weekend - watch out for the wind!