Wichita hasn’t hit 100 once yet this year, and only one temperature record fell in the last three months.
But 2012 still set a record for warmest spring in Wichita history – and in dramatic fashion. According to the National Weather Service, the average spring temperature recorded at Mid-Continent Airport was 64.4 degrees, nearly 8 degrees above the long-term spring normal and nearly 7 degrees warmer than the previous record of 56.6 set in 2006.
The new record is due to nothing spectacular, meteorologist Mick McGuire said.
“Just prolonged warmth through an extended period of time,” he said.
March behaved like April. April acted like May. And May put on a pretty good impersonation of June.
“It seems like we’ve been accelerated” through the spring, McGuire said.
Ranchers around Kansas talked about pastures greening up earlier than any time in the past 40 years. Wheat farmers harvested their crop weeks earlier than normal.
It’s too soon to tell if the ahead-of-schedule pattern will persist, McGuire said.
“We don’t see any blistering temperatures (coming) this way” over the next week or so, he said. “In fact, there’s going to be a nice cool down.”
Once showers move through late Sunday and perhaps into Monday, he said, temperatures will linger in the 80s – which is just about where they should be this time of year.