HAbemus Lord Mayor! The final question from the February weather report, namely who will be Frankfurt’s next mayor, has been answered. Now it is clear who will be the successor to Peter Feldmann, whom some consider a bit shaky (the pun is allowed in this section): The man’s name is Mike Josef and, despite the fact that he too is a Social Democrat, makes a solid impression.
Congratulations again from the weathermen of the Rhein-Main editorial team! We hope the election party was suitably boozy, which gives us the cue we need: boozy. Because that was March. Not to say wet. Even wet brisk, because there was again plenty of precipitation from the sky, which means that the past month has conquered a place high up in the statistics. But first things first: 98.1 millimeters of precipitation fell, the normal is 51.1, which is an increase of 92 percent.
March 1988 had even more to offer in this category, which has been measured since 1949, at 107.3 millimeters, in 1981 it was 108.3 and a whopping 115.1 millimeters in March 2001. This means that March just ended fourth place. That’s just the tin medal, but here it comes: It’s extremely rare for ten millimeters or more of precipitation to fall on several days in one day. That was the case four times in 1988, 1981 and just last month: the March months of these years therefore share first place. March 24 was the wettest day at 23.4 millimeters and was the fifth wettest day in March since this data was collected in 1949.
Finally. Because since March 2016 with 57.0 millimeters of precipitation, all subsequent March months have been too dry. Everyone who is concerned about groundwater will be happy. On the other hand, those who belong more in the “glass is half empty” category worry that things will get boggy. By the way, the local CDU called for a well-known swamp to be drained in Frankfurt when it became known that a good friend of the windy mayor mentioned at the beginning probably stumbled across the AWO affair, like his mayor friend. Because the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt has brought charges against the former head of the main office. However, the bold demand for drainage did not help the CDU candidate, and Josef won the race.
Incidentally, on March 19 there was light rain with sunny intervals, the mean temperature was 10.3 degrees. How do we get this date now? Well, a cursory internet search, inspired by the new mayor’s name, revealed that this is Saint Joseph’s Day. And the following applies to him: “A nice St. Joseph’s Day may promise a good year.” Or also: “If it’s clear to Joseph, there will be a good honey year.” From a meteorological point of view or from the bees’ point of view, the prospects are therefore rather so-so.
Observant observers will have noticed that the sun often does not shine when it rains. 113.2 hours of sunshine are also below average, especially as we were used to quite a bit from the past March: With 250.1 hours, March of the previous year was the sunniest ever recorded. More exciting is the fact that the sunniest day was at the beginning of the month, namely March 2 with 10.2 hours. Because it is in the nature of the season that the number of hours of sunshine that can be expected increases the closer we get to the end of the month. Consequently, an old record is also at the end of the month, on March 31, 2003 the sun shone for twelve hours.
As far as the temperatures are concerned, the past March cannot invalidate the carefully formulated suspicion that it is getting warmer and warmer: average temperature 7.6 degrees. Looking at the reference period from 1961 to 1990, 5.2 degrees would have been expected, so it was 2.4 degrees too warm. However, the deviation is only 0.8 degrees when looking at the period from 1991 to 2020.
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