Today is the first day of Spring. It is the Vernal Equinox. This is an astronomical event when the sun lies directly above the equator. It will happen officially at 5:24pm EDT. Remember due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis the sun appears to drift north and south of the equator though the year. In the Summer it makes it as far north as the tropic of Cancer. It the Winter it makes it as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn. Here is an article with a little more detail. First day of Spring around the world.

While it is the first day of Spring technically, it will not feel like it. The average high temps for this time of year are around 61 degrees. However, the forecast high for today is only 49 degrees.

It is going to be dry with lots of sunshine, but there will be a steady north/northeast wind at 10ph. This will be around a large area of high pressure.

High temps won’t just be cool here. The entire country will pretty much be running below average today. Take a look!

Tonight strong high pressure will lie overhead. We’ll have clear skies, very little wind, and dry air. So temps will be able to drop down to the 20s over a lot of the region with temps near 30 in the metro and near the shore. It will be a hard freeze for sure. You may even want to slow-drip the faucets overnight if you are in a rural/inland area. The good news… We are going to have a nice warming trend starting tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll still have high pressure in the region, but it will shift around a bit. So our surface winds will will be light and out of the east/southeast. We’ll have lots of sunshine again. So temps should be able to warm to the mid-upper 50s under the mid-March sun.

We’ll still be very dry tomorrow, but the humidity will start to climb a bit on Wednesday. We’ll have more of a south breeze. As the moisture increases it may be enough to pop up a couple of rain showers. Otherwise we’ll be partly cloudy with temperatures rising into the low 60s.

We’ll keep warming up later this week. High temps will be in the 70s on Thursday, and we’ll be near 80 on Friday. The Spring weather that we ordered will finally arrive. It’s on back-order…..

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler