Plans for the garden? Beware of Jack Frost

It's safe to say that spring has been sluggish so far here in the Maritimes.

Sure, we've seen some nice days and warm pushes — although not many on weekends — but for the most part temperatures have ebbed and flowed and averaged near seasonal.

That, of course, makes this latest warm-up all the more welcomed as temperatures surge into the high teens and low to mid-20s over the next couple of days, peaking on Thursday.

While this warm-up may have you thinking about getting your hands dirty in the garden, you may want to think twice before planting anything that's frost-sensitive.

Looking at historical climate normals, we see that average last frost dates are in the second half of May for most of the Maritimes and the threat exists for some even into early June.

Many folks believe that anything frost-sensitive should wait to be planted until after the full moon in June. Interestingly enough, this year the strawberry moon will occur on June 11, which lines up with historical normal last frost dates.

As for our forecast, temperatures are indeed set to cool back to seasonal throughout the weekend, before turning below seasonal for early next week, as a system moves into the region with more clouds and showers.

Beyond that takes us into grain-of-salt territory. However, long-range guidance is signalling that temperatures will be near to below average during the final stretch of May.

The good news is the near seasonal temperatures and persistent systems that have been through the region with rain have helped with the dry conditions that had taken hold throughout the winter months.

While we are still experiencing abnormally dry conditions across a large part of Nova Scotia, including eastern areas of the Annapolis Valley, the latest update from the Canadian Drought Monitor says conditions have improved.

These more favourable drought conditions are key for the spring wildfire risk and important as we get set to turn the page into the warm summer season when widespread rains are harder to come by. 

As for that summer forecast, long-range climate models continue to signal warmer than average conditions across the region for the months of June, July and August.