Happy Dry St. Patrick's Day!

Now, there's a contradiction in terms. The local watering holes will be doing their best to remedy the situation, but the nearly 5-week-long dry spell continues in the Washington DC metro area. The weak low pressure area moving through south of us last night was even wimpier and drier than we were hinting at yesterday. Radar showed some bands of precipitation over the area, but nearly all of it failed to penetrate the very dry air closer to the surface.

The map of 24-hr. precipitation from Unisys shows only one report of as much as 0.01" east of the mountains. Alone of the 3 major regional reporting locations, National reported a trace of light rain from around midnight to 2am, leaving the total for the month since mid-February at a little over ¼".

CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose.

There have been only 4 Marches in 135 years in Washington with less than 1" of precipitation, and we are now at 3% of that amount. The most recent March under 1" was 1986 with 0.74".

With the extensive clearing this afternoon, temperatures range from 50° to the low 50s across the region.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Under clear skies and light winds, lows tonight should fall to the low 30s in town, upper 20s in the cooler 'burbs. Tomorrow will be sunny and a bit cool for the season, highs in the upper 40s.