1st Day Of Spring: After Polar Vortex, When Will Days Get Warm?

ACROSS AMERICA — Take heart, ye who have had it with winter up to your chattering teeth and frozen-shut 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 suggests chilly weather won't entirely disappear.

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.

Mild, wet weather will usher in spring in most parts of the country, according to the forecast. The Farmers' Almanac sees plenty of thunderstorms over the central and eastern states during April, and says the threat of tornados could increase.

The forecast says the Great Lakes and South Central states will be slow to warm up, the Southwest will be warm and dry, and the Northwest will have periods of mild, wet weather that may make it unpleasant to get outside.

Summer weather may come early, the Farmers' Almanac says, and much of the eastern United States could heat up toward the end of the May.