It’s been a busy start to April for me and figured it was time to put out a March 2021 recap. March ended up being chilly and fairy dry. We had a several really warm and nice days with a mild high of 67° to close out the month on the 31st; however, Salem dipped to or fell below freezing 11 separate days which is fairly impressive for March with the coldest temp occurring on the 16th with a low of 28°. The consistently chilly mornings led to an overall below average month with Salem being 2.09° colder than average for the entire month.

In the precipitation category it was a dry month with Salem receiving only 2.33″ (58%) of the normal monthly rainfall. For the mountains, the saving grace was that the storms we did have were quite chilly which meant our snowpack stayed above normal throughout the northern half of the state. Unfortunately, the southern half of the state is currently lagging behind as many of the storms this past month merely brushed the southern regions of the state leaving those regions even drier. This is reflected well on the map below.

There you have it. A pretty simple month. The cold front we had on Sunday the 28th was perhaps the most exciting event with widespread gusts of 30 to 35mph here in the valley along with a sharp drop in temperature that evening; otherwise it was a mostly quiet month.