Could May be like April? Yes it could!

I'm not liking what I'm seeing and reading. There is a real possibility that this cool, wet weather pattern could  continue well into the month of May. A week ago it seemed that by mid-May we would start to turn, but perhaps that thought was premature.

Indications are that the month of May is going
to be wet with rainfall averaging above normal.
(Map courtesy of www.accuweather.com)

For the near future, this week is looking just like April...cool and wet.  We will start to dry out and warm up a tad the later part of the week, but don't get excited. Our normal daytime highs the beginning of the month should be in the mid 60s.  By mid-month it's around 70. And, while we will touch those numbers on occasion, I don't foresee an extended warm spell during the next two weeks. We will likely spend a lot of days at or below normal. Bummer, eh?

So, in order to save your mental capacities, just don't plan on a change anytime soon.  (Hopefully this won't last all summer!)


The Month of April

OK...now let's look at just how yucky April was.

Temperature-wise, you may find this hard to believe, but the Akron/Cleveland area actually ended up around 2.5 degrees ABOVE normal. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like it, but we had eight really warm days and that skewed the average. The highs the rest of the month were slightly above to slightly below normal. Add in the clouds and rain and the normal temperatures just didn't feel normal.

Rain was actually the big story for April. If you count calendar days (midnight to midnight), April had only 4 dry days. There were eight days when we had a TRACE of rain or snow. Every other day had measurable rainfall. Here at the Weather Center in Streetsboro we ended up with 4.97" of liquid...that's about 150% of normal. At the National Weather Service office at Cleveland Hopkins rainfall was more than twice normal. So, yep it was wet.