Eberl, archive
Ingolstadt
And so the Central European Opera will experience this spring until well into April, which is particularly moody this year, that every few years winter is particularly hard to say goodbye to. This time it is the same.
The fact that felt and measured weather do not always have to coincide is nothing new. In particular, the informative value of statistical values does not always match the impressions that arise in everyday life. For example, a closed snow cover, which falls over crocuses and the first daffodils at the astronomical start of spring on March 20, of all things, cannot be ignored by an even slightly above-average monthly mean of the air temperature. Both peculiarities of the past month, which already gave a slight view of the capricious weather that still characterize these April days.
The third month of the year started with perfectly acceptable daytime temperatures: two-digit peaks were reached three times in the first week. In the middle of the month, for three days in a row, values between 10 and 13 degrees were acceptable for March, and the final phase of March was definitely springtime – if only the arctic cold fronts hadn’t happened in between. Then the thermometer went badly on its knees again. The measured values shown here all come from the Kschinger station of the German Weather Service (DWD).
On 14 days alone (better: in the nights) there was frost, with the low point of the month being reached in the night of March 7th with minus 4.9 degrees. On the other hand, the mercury column also reached the double-digit range on 14 days during the day – most clearly at the end of the month, when there were eight consecutive days with this characteristic. The 30th and 31st March even had the maximum values ready with 21.2 and 22.2 degrees respectively. The previous month came to an average temperature of 4.7 degrees – 0.2 degrees above the mean of the meteorological comparison series (1961 to 1990).
The quite respectable temperatures on around half of all March days were favored by an impressive number of hours of sunshine for the first meteorological spring month. Especially at the beginning and at the end of the month, daily values of around eleven and even up to almost twelve hours were achieved, which for astronomical reasons represents the optimum daily yield at this time of the year. Compared to previous years, the total of 163.6 hours of sunshine was well above the target: around a third more sunshine was registered at the Kschingen DWD station than the average in the comparison series.
Precipitation showed the greatest deviations from the long-term values in March, and this again downwards. With a yield of only 29.2 liters per square meter, the previous month was far from what would have been expected from a purely statistical point of view (39 percent less). Once again, the signs are that the spring is too dry, which, after previous years with consistently little rainfall, could again prove to be a heavy burden for agriculture and of course for all private gardening enthusiasts.
There was measurable precipitation at the Kschinger station on twelve March days, but the yield rarely exceeded two or three liters. The wettest day with a volume of 7.2 liters was March 19, when the rain slowly turned into snow. DK
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