By John Simpson
March 2022, just like last month, was cooler and drier than normal, generally. Last month I “bragged” that my rain gauge recorded the most rain in the area for February.
Well, for March, I was one of the driest readings in the Vail area. I only recorded 0.35” of rain, which is slightly below my 11-year average of 0.46.” The Tucson airport was even drier, recording only 0.19” with a 30-year average of 0.56.” Rainfall in the Vail readership area ranged from a low of 0.35” to a high of around 1 inch. Central Del Lago, Mescal, Mesquite Ranch, and the Kolb and I-10 areas were on the low end of the rainfall recording between 0.35 and 0.50.” the Old Spanish Trail Corridor and Rita Ranch areas recorded from 0.50 to 0.75.” The winner was the New Tucson area where the one-inch rain amounts were recorded, which can easily be above average for March for this area. Much of the Tucson area recorded between 0.10” and 0.75” so Vail was definitely wetter. In addition, this is the 18th straight March at the airport that has recorded below normal precipitation.
On the temperature side, the high temperatures for March were 1.4 degrees above average, and the low temperatures were 1.9 degrees below average, leading to March 2022 being slightly below average by 0.2 degrees at the airport. March 2022 was the 24th warmest March on record but, as I explained in previous articles, the weather service is now using the 1991-2020 averages, which are much warmer than the precious 1981 to 2010 averages. So, even though March 2022 was one degree warmer than March 2021, this March was below average, while last March was above average, due to using two different sets of 30-year averages. I hope what I said made sense. So far for the month of April I have recorded only a trace of rain and it does not look like any rain will fall during April. For next month, I will discuss April, which is one of the driest months for southern Arizona.
John Simpson has lived in southern Arizona the past 33 years and Vail for 17 of those years. John has a bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Science from the University of Missouri and a mster’s degree in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Arizona. He loves exploring the outdoors with his family and photographing weather and the beauty of southern Arizona.
