In the spirit of the current political campaign, let me take you back to the Reagan-Mondale and Reagan-Carter debates when Ronald Reagan used his famous expression, “there you go again.”
That’s what you will say to me as I go on my recurrent rant against bank thermometers. Last Wednesday — a fabulous March day when record highs were reported in may New England and Northeastern cities — I recorded a high, at my house, of 73 degrees. Seeing that, I quickly drove to the Main Street bank thermometer, less than a minute away, and it read a scorching 83 degrees.
Did you say it yet? “There you go again, Tom.”
I know it’s one of my pet peeves. What a thermometer reads is a product of the location of the sensor. I could have put the sensor of my remote reading thermometer in the freezer and it would have registered -5 last Wednesday. I shudder to think!
Now, with our early spring-like temperatures so far, is it a false spring or will we see more snow?
Watch out for late this week. Some snow could be in the air and there could be a big storm around March 21. Right now the vote is for rain, but a slight turn to the right could bring snow to the region.
Weather people will be debating this issue all week long. And remember this, snow in the spring is a part of the climatological platform in New England.
I like to remind people of the April Fool’s Day storm several years ago and that Opening Day blizzard in 1982, which canceled major league baseball games in the Northeast. On opening day, most people would cast their vote for rain, by a landslide. It would be HUGE!
Tom Bevacqua is a longtime area television meteorologist, appearing on Channel 3 in Springfield. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physical geography and history from the University of North Dakota, and a master’s degree in sociology from Southern Connecticut State, and teaches meteorology at Greenfield High School.