The relative unusual-ness of the warm weather we had in the first part of March can be compared to a tall person.
I am not a tall man; 5’ 5” if I am wearing shoes with thick heels. So, this makes me shorter than average. But a couple hundred years ago, I would have been relatively close to average because people are getting taller. Likewise, a 6’ 4” man would have been a giant in medieval times but only seems a bit tall today.
Temperatures near 70 degrees in early or mid March did not occur until 1910. It happened again in 1911. It happened sporadically through the decades of the Twentieth Century. But since about 1981, this sort of thing has become increasingly common. Warm weather in early March is still rare, but it is far more common than it was a hundred years ago. It happens more often as our climate grows warmer just as 6’ 4” men are more common than in the past.
