Paris Alston: This is GBH's Morning Edition. The first day of spring is less than a month away, although meteorological spring begins March 1. But today we will have temperatures that will make it feel like it's here already.
Jeremy Siegel: For the latest on the forecast and what's behind this mild weather, we are joined by meteorologist Dave Epstein. Good morning Dave.
Dave Epstein: Good morning. Good to be here with you.
Siegel: So like 60 degrees again today. Are you calling it at this point? Did we not get a winter this year?
Epstein: Yeah, I mean, effectively winter's over, right? We just didn't get a winter. And, we've got obviously, as Paris just mentioned, climatological or meteorological spring begins here later this week. So yeah, I mean, there's just not a winter. Could it snow again? Are we going to get some cold? It's going to be cold on Thursday. Absolutely. But as far as I'm concerned March is spring and it's time to start thinking about that. I also want to mention that the ski areas are still going to be open for quite a while. So we want to send people up north. There is snow up there. Skiing is pretty good. Obviously they could use a snow storm and we could still see a snowstorm here between now and the end of March.
Alston: What was that Prince said, Dave? Sometimes it snows in April, right? So we can't jump the gun too quickly here. But, Dave, last winter was also pretty mild, if I remember correctly. I mean, how do the two compare?
Epstein: Yeah, I mean, they're very similar in terms of amount of snowfall. Last year we ended up with about a foot. This year, we're under that. If we were to stay, let's say it doesn't snow again, more than I think a couple of inches between now and when it ever stops, this would be unusual, to have back-to-back winters this low. So it'd be the first time since 1872, when records go back, that we've seen so little snow in two winters like this in a row. So that's, I think, the really unusual part. Again, we could still see a snowstorm. But once you get into March, even if we got a foot of snow, you know, on March 17th, I'm making this up — on Saint Patrick's Day, there was a big snowstorm, it's gone in a few days. Yes, there could be wintry weather, but winter itself, we had that in January for about a week.
Siegel: So, Dave, what do you say to people who are looking at two years straight of mild winters, saying snowy winters are a thing of the past at this point?
Epstein: Yeah, I mean, that's not true. I mean, two winters in a row or two mild winters, are two mild winters. The climate is warming up. We know that. But we're going to see a snowy winter. It's going to happen again. We'll see a winter where we have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, maybe 90 inches of snow. I don't know whether it's next winter, the winter after, the winter after that, but somewhere in the next few years, we're going to see a big winter. As I look out at averages, and if you look at average snowfall in Boston right now, it's around 48, 49 inches over the 30 years. But if you look and you start breaking it up into little decade amounts, what you see is you have these decades where the snowfall is as high as almost 60 inches, and then other decades where it's almost half that. So it is very cyclical around here that we get these periods where you kind of revert to the average. And after having the snowiest decade on record — a lot of people forget that — between about 2004 or '05 in about 2015, that was the snowiest decade on record. Now we're just kind of averaging in a less snowy decade that's going to keep us around that 45 inches.
Alston: And would you say, Dave, I'm curious, like are the stretches of time between which we see snowy winters, is that period getting longer as the climate changes?
Epstein: It's really not. If you look at if you look at — you go back to 1872, like you go back to the early 1900s, you see this period where there wasn't a lot of snow. If you're of my age, you remember after the blizzard of '78, things kind of shut down a bit for that next decade. And I really think that after that 2014-15 winter, things have kind of quieted down. That was kind of a big peak, as was '77-78. That was kind of another peak in terms of snowfall. And also back in, I think it's '95-96, we had a lot of snow. And then we kind of pared down a little bit for a decade until we got back up again, ending in that 2015 area.
Siegel: So what does two mild winters in a row mean for plants? You're a gardening expert. When you have warmer temperatures for two years, does that affect the cyclical nature of the plants that we see around New England?
Epstein: Yeah, I mean it depends on what's going to happen between now and early May. So let's just take the peach crop because it was decimated last year by that cold that we had in early February. Let's just say that we continued very mild. And all of a sudden the blooms came out two, three weeks early and then we got a freeze. That would hurt things. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but that would be the problem in terms of not having a really strong dormant period for plants, it does affect some of the diseases and things like woolly adelgid, which affects the hemlocks that may have a little bit of a boost this year. Some of the other bugs and things like that that just didn't get kind of pushed back, may have a bigger push moving into the summer, but it's not going to really hurt, like, trees and things like that a couple of years in a row.
Alston: Well, that is meteorologist Dave Epstein. A reminder that if you ever have a plant or weather-related question for him, you can always text that to 617-300-2008. Dave, thank you so much.
Epstein: You're welcome.
Siegel: You're listening to GBH News.
