by Daniel Brouse
February 24, 2023
Parts of Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Maryland, and New York are all experiencing the earliest spring conditions on record. The National Phenology Network has published a study on February 21, 2023 that found:
Spring leaf out continues to spread north, arriving several days to weeks earlier than average (the period of 1991-2020) in much of the Southeast, lower Midwest, and mid-Atlantic. New York City is 32 days early, Baltimore, MD is 20 days early, and Louisville, KY is 16 days early. Much of southern California and Arizona are days to over a week late, while the coastal Northwest is days to weeks early. Phoenix, AZ is a week late. Seattle, WA is a week early.
“It’s a little unsettling, it’s certainly something that is out of the bounds of when we’d normally expect spring,” said Teresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network and an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona. “It perhaps isn’t surprising, given the trajectory our planet is on, but it is surprising when you live through it.”
Parts of the Southeast, lower Midwest, and mid-Atlantic are seeing either the earliest spring on record or a spring that only occurs once every 40 years