1st Day Of Spring Is Coming: How Warm Will It Feel In New York?

NEW YORK — Take heart, ye who have had it with winter up to your chattering teeth and frozen nose. Warmer days are coming — the spring equinox officially arrives at 5:37 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday, March 20 — even if the Farmers’ Almanac’s extended spring forecast calls for weather in New York that is not as warm or dry as one might want.

Winter has held much of the country in an icy grip as a polar vortex reached the country’s southern border in recent days. The weather has been brutal and hideous over much of the country, and not just among the folks who have nothing better to talk about than the weather.

The extreme cold in places where people normally live in shorts and T-shirts during the winter is the result of a split in the polar vortex, a large area of low pressure that spins around the poles in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

It’s the coldest air on the planet. When something happens to knock the stratospheric polar vortex — the layer of cold air 5 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface — off balance, as happened this year, look out: Pieces of the bitterly cold polar vortex can split off and swirl southward.

The Farmers’ Almanac's extended spring forecast suggests you’ll be able to pack those memories away with the thermal long johns and fleece-lined boots and trade them for rain gear in most parts of the country.

In New York, we can expect wet and mild weather which just might be welcome after going through multiple snow events each week recently.

The Farmers Almanac said spring 2021 will be mild and wet for most parts of the country, with plenty of thunderstorms in the eastern states during late April. There might even be some tornadic activity.

Toward the end of May, there could be an early spell of heat blanketing much of the eastern United States, with unsettled weather ushering in June.