March comes in like a lion, and it sure was a moody lion at that. Corey Davis, the Assistant State Climatologist for North Carolina, what a week or so that we have had. I’m going to let you recap it, because I can’t even keep track of it. You need a scorecard to keep track of everything that’s happened over the last week or so.

Yeah, Mike, this has been one of the most active up and down weather weeks we’ve seen in quite a while, and it really started last Wednesday. That’s when we were seeing 80 degree temperatures across parts of eastern North and South Carolina, very much a late spring to early summer like temperature for those areas. And then after that, when it was already that warm, we saw a very dry air mass move in low humidities, gusty winds that made for just a powder keg type condition across the Carolinas over the weekend, when we were seeing hundreds of wildfires start to burn and spread across the landscape, definitely made for busy conditions for the State Forest Service over the past week, and then earlier this week, on Wednesday, we saw a very strong cold front cross the North and South Carolina part of the country, brought some severe thunderstorms. Even had a tornado in Union County, just on the east side of Charlotte, and just to make sure, Mother Nature packed in all four seasons in one week, Mike, we actually had a little bit of snow up in the mountains of North Carolina. About half an inch fell in parts of Mitchell and Yancey counties, so definitely a little bit of everything here over these past seven to 10 days.

Wow, you’re not kidding. Let’s go back to the wildfire situation down near the coast, dry, windy conditions. What brought all that about?

Yeah, really just a perfect storm of ingredients, and one of those has been that prolonged dry spell and drought that especially the eastern part of North and South Carolina have been in for several months. Just going back over the last three months, we’ve got pretty widespread precipitation deficits of three to six inches below normal. It’s even more than that if you go back into the fall months after Helene, when we started drying out in the first place, we’re also seeing deficits in the western part of the state, in some of those areas that were under water from Helene just six months ago. So it’s worth noting, this has not just been a coastal issue. This has been more widespread, and we did see several large wildfires burning in western North Carolina over the past week. On top of that, again, we had that warm weather that helped increase those evaporation rates. Vegetation was already dry, but at this time of the year, that vegetation is still dormant. In most cases, it has not greened up yet, so that makes it extra flammable. And when you have all those ingredients coming together along with those gusty winds, it’s really just a matter of when, not if, you’ll see fires popping up. And when they did pop up, they spread pretty quickly. So I know in North Carolina, just over the past week, more than 3600 acres were burned on state and private lands in South Carolina. That’s more like 4500 acres, and about half of that was from one large fire in Horry County at the Carolina Forest.

And then we move into stormy conditions in the middle part of the week, on Wednesday, even some tornado reports I understand, tell us about that.

Yeah, this is what we can expect as we head into the spring, we’ll see these strong cold fronts come through. These are powered by the difference between very cold air behind them and very warm air, especially to our south and east. That was the case as that front moved through on Wednesday even early on Wednesday morning in parts of western North Carolina, we were seeing some pretty strong storms out toward the mountains. One of the big hazards from that was not just those severe thunderstorms, but the gusty winds that they packed. We had wind gusts to 50,60 miles per hour across the Piedmont. So I know there were some down trees, a few localized power outages during that system. But again, that’s a preview of what we can expect, especially as we head into the heart of our severe weather season this spring. Some of the forecast, even over the next couple weeks, are showing at least one more good chance of severe storms across the eastern US as we head to the middle of March.

I understand there was some snow in the Midwest about the same time. That was a completely different system, right?

It was the similar system, but not the same impacts as what it had on us. It was still a pretty strong low pressure system that was moving through there. The cold front that was draped off of that low pressure ended up moving through our region, but at the heart of that low stayed to the north. But again, that goes to show that strong temperature difference that we’ve got right now, very cold air as we head further north and west, and then warm air to the south and east. Anywhere those air masses collide, you can get some pretty active weather.

And certainly we did earlier this week, and you’re right colder air. We dropped something like 20 degrees in some spots, I think it was a big difference. And so now what? How long is this cold air going to be with us? And are we going to continue this roller coaster ride of temperatures?

Yeah, definitely a roller coaster ride in the forecast over the next week. One bit of good news today is that those winds will be dying down. We won’t have the same breezy, gusty conditions that we did yesterday, so that’ll be a big relief for the folks that are fighting those wildfires. We will be warming up slightly today into the low 60s in most areas, and then especially tomorrow, we’ll see a nice jump in temperatures into the mid 70s with sunny skies by late Saturday night, and especially early Sunday morning, we can expect our next chance of rain. This is a low pressure system that’s tracking to our south. It looks like the best chances of decent rain will be along the coast in South Carolina, maybe half an inch to an inch in some spots. So again, that Horry County Fire that’s still burning, that rain will be a big help in that area. As you head further north, especially across North Carolina, into the triad up along the Virginia border looks like those rain chances will be lower. May only see a few sprinkles out of that system on Sunday, and then we’ll continue a pretty nice warm up early next week, in the 60s on Monday, in the 70s by Tuesday, maybe close to 80 degrees by next Wednesday. So we’re not going to have that same severe weather that we did last week, but certainly the temperature ups and downs will still be there.