A Return to Warm Weather

Happy Seward's Day! According to Gothamist's Alaska weather calendar the purchase of Alaska in 1867 by Secretary of State William H. Seward is celebrated on the last day of March. Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful modern North American earthquake. The earthquake and resulting tsunami destroyed much of Seward, Alaska and many other coastal Alaskan towns.

What's that got to do with New York? Seward was a state senator, governor and U.S. senator from our state. There's a statue of him in Madison Square Park. Today will be a great day to gaze upon Seward while you're eating a shack burger in the park. Much as a ball rolls down a hill, air is rolling off a high pressure system centered over Ohio this morning. As the air sinks it becomes compressed and warms. The compression, and the sun, are why we will warm into the upper-50s today despite northwesterly winds. If Seward's statue isn't your thing try to find the new weather-related sculpture!

We will cool down to the lower-50s tomorrow but it looks like our high temperatures will flirt with 60 for the rest of the week. March is going out like a lamb. There's a slight chance of rain on Wednesday and the odds are good that April will start with a few showers. That would be good as March precipitation is nearly three inches below normal.

False color (the ground isn’t that green yet!) satellite image of this morning's clear skies from the Naval Research Labs