“Spring” blooms early across southeast U.S.

An article published by the USA-National Phenology Network revealed that spring has gotten off to a very fast start across the southeast United States. Vegetation has begun showing signs of spring-leafing as far north as central Arkansas and Tennessee.

They also indicated that this has been the earliest this leafing has occurred in nearly 40 years of record-keeping across parts of the southeastern U.S.

The Culprit

So what gives? What's causing such an unusually quick start to the spring season this year? Well, it's had a lot to do with rainfall (I mean, a LOT of rainfall) and far warmer than average temperatures.

This pattern has been exceptionally consistent, stretching all the way back to the beginning of January. Jet stream winds have tended to dive along the west coast of the United States into New Mexico and Texas and ride up over top of mid-Missouri.

This has been the reason we've been under the gun for non-stop winter storms the past several weeks.. Further south, the wet pattern has persisted, but it has also been overlapped by the warmer than average air.

This pattern has been stuck this way for so long, that plants have been "tricked" into thinking it's the start of spring, even though we're still one month away from the official start.

That overlap of warmer and wetter than average conditions have led to the perfect recipe for "spring" to start well ahead of schedule this year.

Will mid-MO see an early spring?

While this spread of spring-leafing has spread very quickly from the Gulf Coast to the Tennessee Valley very quickly over the past few weeks, that's likely to slow down.

A large-scale shift in the weather pattern will lead to cooler than average temperatures expected for nearly the entire country closing out February and welcoming March.

This means, for us here in mid-Missouri, we probably won't see spring-leafing conditions until at least mid-to-late March.

-Luke