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“The beginning of March this year is going to feel like winter.”
Karen Navarro helps shovel out a neighbor’s car Wednesday afternoon on County Street in New Bedford. John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe
With the final weekend of the month coming up, calendars will quickly flip to March.
I love March. I also love November, and I know both months are not most people’s favorites.
Before I get to the weather outlook for March, which starts Sunday, let me put in some good words for the month. In nearly every year, March is the month in which we get back our bare ground. Some years, of course, it comes earlier, and there are a few examples where it comes and goes throughout the month. But for the most part, there’s a revealing of the grass during the month. This gives us an opportunity to see what the winter did to our trees, shrubs, and lawns, but we also gain an appreciation for the subtle changes that occur this month.
Crocuses and even some early daffodils will bloom this month as will hamamelis or witch-hazel. Red-winged blackbirds will be noisy in the morning, along with a cacophony of other songbirds.
Tremendous daylight
March brings tremendous daylight with 11 hours and 14 minutes of it to start and 12 hours and 40 minutes to finish. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, March 8, we spring forward into daylight saving time again; then two weeks later, astronomical spring begins on March 20 (the spring equinox) and the sun angle rises by over 10 degrees.
In some years, March brings the final freeze for downtown Boston, but for most of us, it’s way too early to be thinking about non-freezing temperatures.
In 1952, the temperature was 25 degrees in Boston on St Patrick’s Day morning and that was the last time it went below freezing until the following autumn. As a side note, 2024 and 2022 brought the final freezes of the season to Boston during the final week of March.
March: ‘In like a lion’?
This year, we’re going to start the month cold. The polar vortex, which keeps the cold air locked up in the Arctic, can occasionally allow that frigid air to escape southward when it stretches or wobbles. New England should feel one more burst of Arctic air as we start the new month. You could say that March is going to come in like a lion, at least in terms of those cold temperatures.
We’ll have to watch a storm system brewing for the first week of the month as well. With the Arctic air in place and moisture trying to move up from the south, we could be looking at more snow. The track and intensity of a storm is impossible to predict a week away, but that’s our next significant chance of any more shoveling. Indeed, the beginning of March this year is going to feel like winter.
Historically, most of March’s snow will fall before March 20, but we can see accumulation at any time. Average snowfall is around 9 inches, but we tend to have snowy Marchs or not-so-snowy Marchs.
Snow accumulation so far this season for Boston had reached 60 inches as of Wednesday, making it the snowiest winter since 2021-22. Still other locations, especially Providence, are pacing the historic totals from 2014-15’s Snowmageddon.
Rest of the month
I don’t want to give false hope, but the second week of March has a strong indication for much milder air moving into the region. This air may be warm enough to really make a big dent in our snow piles. This could be the first time Boston gets to 60 degrees or higher since Nov. 26, 2025. On that day, we reached 63. I’m not predicting that’s going to happen, but I think there’s at least some possibility that we end up milder than average for at least a few days that second week.
Looking further out, weeks three and four show higher than average probabilities of temperatures at or a little above average. Since this is over a 14-day span, there could still be some cold, but this is certainly a better long-term pattern than what we’ve seen in months, if you don’t like cold weather.
Winter this year has brought consistent cold and consistent snow, the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a decade. This is also going to mean that for many, the upcoming spring will be cherished a little more than usual.
But before we get there, March will inevitably bring us hope — and also disappointment. So buckle up.
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