For many across the United States, this has already been a long, cold, lonely (for some) winter, as described by the Beatles in “Here Comes the Sun.” The unpredictable, but hopefully transitional month of March awaits us on Monday, the flip side of this weekend. This will be the last time the month of March begins on a Monday until the year 2021.
March tantalizes us with diminishing darkness, artificially enhanced by the arrival of daylight savings time on March 14th, and gradually, but erratically warming temperatures. It has oftentimes been a blustery month, typically punctuated by sure signs of an early spring, budding trees and blooming flowers, all too often followed by an occasional unwelcome blizzard, temporarily burying these hopes beneath a heavy blanket of snow.
History reassures us that our weather will indeed change during the month of March. This can be illustrated by reviewing March weather at our current population center of the United States, which is located 2.8 miles east of Edgar Springs, Missouri, as determined by the 2000 census. One might ask if the recent ascendance of nearby Branson as a tourist destination was a coincidence? This location will likely change following the completion of the 2010 census, but during the 20th century, this point migrated 324 miles to the west and 101 miles to the south. Significantly, 79 of the 101 miles of southward movement occurred during the second half of the 1900s.
