Winter Ends & Spring Begins Early

A couple of weeks ago the Washington Post produced a beautiful animated map of the number of inches of snow received by the United States over the winter. In Mapping Snowfall in the United States the Post mapped the accumulation of snow across the whole country over the season, from October through to the end of March.

Inspired by the Washington Post's map David Waldron has created a series of animated maps to visualize the snow impact for a number of individual storms over the last winter. In Snowfall Animations for 2018 Winter Storms Waldron uses the same data from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center to create a series of snowfall animations for each individual winter storm.


At the same time as the Washington Post was saying goodbye to Winter the New York Times was welcoming in spring. In Hang On, Northeast. In Some Parts, Spring Has Already Sprung the New York Times mapped out where spring has already arrived in the United States, and where it is late.

The Time's story included a really impressive animated map which shows when the first leaves usually begin to appear across the United States. On the map spring begins at the southern tip of Florida in January and then quickly creeps up through the rest of the United States in the following months.

The Spring Equinox always comes towards the end of March. However due to climate change spring is beginning earlier and earlier across the United States. In Spring is Arriving Earlier NASA's Earth Observatory has mapped out where in the United States the first leaves and first blooms are appearing earlier in the year.

NASA has created two maps. One shows the areas of the country where in 2016 the first leaves of spring arrived earlier than usual and the other shows where the first blooms appeared in 2016 earlier than the average. In both maps areas are colored to show the number of days early the first leaves or first blooms appeared.