Extended Spring Forecast Released: Here's What To Expect In PA

PENNSYLVANIA — Take heart, ye who have had it with winter up to your chattering teeth. Warmer days are coming.

The spring equinox officially arrives at 5:37 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday, March 20 — even if the Farmers’ Almanac’s extended spring forecast calls for some soggy days and nights in Pennsylvania.

Winter has held much of the country in an icy grip as a polar vortex reached its southern border in recent days. The weather has been brutal and hideous over much of the country, and not just among the folks who have nothing better to talk about than the weather.

The extreme cold in places where people normally live in shorts and t-shirts during the winter is the result of a split in the polar vortex, a large area of low pressure that spins around the poles in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

It’s the coldest air on the planet. When something happens to knock the stratospheric polar vortex — the layer of cold air 5 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface — off balance, as happened this year, look out: Pieces of the bitterly cold polar vortex can split off and swirl southward.

The Farmers’ Almanac's extended spring forecast suggests you’ll be able to pack those memories away with the thermal long johns and fleece-lined boots and trade them for rain gear in most parts of the country.

In Pennsylvania, expect a wet and mild spring, according to the almanac.

There will be plenty of thunderstorms over the eastern states during late April, the forecast says, and, in some cases, those storms might give rise to tornadoes.

Easter this year is on April 4. To see if the weather will impact your Easter Sunday plans in Pennsylvania, you may check the forecast for our zone here.

Our first real spell of early heat could come toward the end of May, the almanac says, when higher temperatures will come to much of the eastern United States. Unfortunately, unsettled weather over the Great Lakes and northeast could lead to trouble viewing a dawn solar eclipse on June 10.