Spring . . .Winter . . . Spring . . . Winter . . . Snow?

The temperatures have been going up and down since spring started on March 20, when we got a couple of inches of snow but saw it melt within a couple of days.  Later this week, it should warm up to the 60s with a lot of rain for the area, then cool down again to around a high of 40 on Saturday, but it should be around 51 on Monday.

However . . .  some amateur social-media forecasters are looking at the computer models and calling for snowfall on Easter weekend (April 4-5).  And not just run-of-the-mill April snow that melts almost as soon as it falls, but an actual winter storm that dumps a foot of the white stuff in time for Santa Claus to help the Easter Bunny deliver the eggs.  And with strong winds. 

Joe Cioffi - the professional forecaster I've referred to here - is saying something different, based on models he's seen, suggesting that the temperatures should reach normal levels by Easter weekend, though he hasn't apparently looked at any precipitation models.  Dave Curren, the on-camera meteorologist at the cable channel News 12 New Jersey, likes to point out that any weather models made ten to fourteen days in advance are speculative and could and will change.  For the better, I hope.  But there is a precedent for an April snowstorm - a blizzard, in fact, and that's the April blizzard of 1982 that dumped ten inches of snow in the greater New York area and produced strong winds that caused the snow to blow and drift all over the place.  A pre-Easter nor'easter in the truest sense (Easter fell on April 11 in 1982; the snowstorm that year occurred on April 6), we could very well get a repeat of that historic snowfall.

And yes, I know the extended forecasts for Easter weekend, ten days out, show rain and snow showers but temperatures too mild for snow.  Guess what?  High temperature forecasts for March 20 ten days out called for temperatures too mild for snow.  But we got a little bit of snow.  Now, in the first weekend of April, we could get a whole lot more.

Models, of course, aren't the same as forecasts, and these amateur forecasters ("amateur" isn't the same as "novice," remember) could just be talking smack. Or, we snow-haters are the ones who could be smacked. :-O