May Kicks Off With Snow and Cold

Spring weather tests patience.  

Unless you're a skier/snowboarder, an incurable winter storm fan, or Winter Weather Expert Tom Niziol (Facebook | Twitter), once March and especially April arrive, you're probably sick of snow and cold.  

Surface temperature anomalies from April 1-23, 2013. Colder than average temperatures are indicated by blue/purple shadings. Greatest cold anomalies indicated by blue box. (Image credit: NOAA/CPC)

Average May Highs

This spring has been especially frustrating for those itching to leave Ol' Man Winter behind.

First, March was the coldest in 11 years for the Lower 48 States.  In some locations, March was actually colder than January!

(MORE:  March Cold Recap)

Then the first roughly three weeks of April were frustratingly cold in the nation's heartland, particularly in the northern Plains.

Several coldest/latest records were set from the "Nation's Icebox" (Int'l Falls, Minn.) to the Deep South.  Not to mention a parade of late-season snowstorms from the Rockies to the Upper Midwest.

(MORE:  April Extremes | April Winter Storms)

The calendar turns to May this week, so, surely, we can pack away all that cold and snow until the fall again, right?  

After all, as the average May highs shown at right indicates, highs at least in the 60s are the norm over most of the lower elevations of the nation.

Then again, these are just average statistics.  The weather pattern kicking off May doesn't look anything like an average.