March Weather Summary

Overview

March featured much above normal temperatures across all of central and southeast Illinois.  The mean temperature for the month was 5-8 degrees above normal, which put many sites in or near their top 10 warmest.  This caused the growing season to start a few weeks earlier than normal and put caused some vegetation to be susceptible to freeze damage by the end of the month.  Due to the warm temperatures, precipitation fell as rain, except for some flurries and light snow that affected the area on the 1st.  Rainfall was well above normal for most of central and eastern Illinois, while near to slightly below normal for the western part of the state.  Heavy rain affected the region on the 7th-10th, and again on the 30th-31st.  The first organized severe weather event of the spring affected western Illinois on the 15th, when four tornadoes touched down.  

Significant Events

• March 7-10: Heavy rain was forecast across central and southeast Illinois.  While rain did indeed fall across all of the area, the axis of heaviest rainfall developed further southeast from the Ozarks into the Ohio River Valley.  Widespread amounts of 3 to 5 inches were reported in this area, with as much as 6 inches across western sections of Tennessee and Kentucky.  Further north across the Lincoln NWS County Warning Area (CWA), much lighter amounts of one quarter to three quarters of an inch were common.  The highest totals for our area were focused southeast of the I-70 corridor, with Lawrenceville coming in as the big winner at 1.37".  Below is a map of the rainfall measured from March 7th-10th.

• March 15th: An area of low pressure tracked from west central Illinois into northern Illinois during the late afternoon and evening hours.  Ample instability and wind shear ahead of this storm system allowed several rotating supercell thunderstorms to develop across western and central Illinois.  Four tornadoes touched down in the Lincoln NWS CWA, two of which where rated EF-2 near Peoria and Springfield respectively, during damage surveys the following day.  For a summary including pictures and tornado tracks, see our event page here.
   
• March 30-31: Two days of unsettled weather affected central and southeast Illinois as a series of disturbances tracked across the region.  Scattered showers and storms developed over western Illinois on the morning of March 30th, and continued across much of central Illinois through the afternoon hours.  Some of these storms produced copious amounts of hail, though most of the hail was under 1" in diameter.  Additional waves of showers and storms affected the area overnight, and again during the afternoon of March 30th, when a cold front pushed through the state.  The heaviest rains from this event fell along and east of the I-55 corridor, where 1-2" totals were common.  A 48 hour rainfall map is shown below.

March Precipitation and Temperature Maps

March Climate Data

The table below summarizes March precipitation, snowfall, and temperature, and departure from normal for selected cities across central and southeast Illinois.  Data from Peoria and Springfield are from ASOS sites, while others are from NWS Cooperative Observers.
 

Links below are the monthly climate summaries for area cities. Only the summaries for Peoria, Springfield and Lincoln are considered "official", meaning they are the station of record for their respective locations. The other summaries are "supplemental", meaning another location in the area is the official climate station for that city.

• Peoria -- Peoria International Airport
• Springfield -- Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport
• Lincoln -- Lincoln NWS office
• Champaign -- University of Illinois - Willard Airport
• Decatur -- Decatur Airport
• Lawrenceville -- Lawrenceville-Vincennes International Airport
• Mattoon -- Coles County Airport

Climate data for other area cities is available at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=ilx