Snow in Texas? In May? Welcome to Spring, 2013

By just about anyone's definition, this has been a lousy spring in the Charlotte region.

We've had a seemingly endless series of cloudy days, afternoon temperatures have been below average most of the time, and it's been wet.

At 3 p.m. Thursday, on the first day of the Wells Fargo Championship, at a time of year when we're usually enjoying sunshine and temperatures near 80 degrees, it was 60 degrees and raw in Charlotte.

For lack of a more scientific word, Thursday's weather was garbage.

But it could have been worse -- and, in fact, it was a lot worse to our west.

A May snowstorm, which is a full-fledged meteorological rarity, roared across the Midwest and even affected parts of the Southwest. Some snow was reported in Amarillo, Texas. Omaha got about 4 inches of snow -- its most ever in May.  A number of cities recorded snow for the first time in May.

And it's not through.  Cold air funneling southward around the low pressure system will bring chilly temperatures into parts of the South over the next few days.  Justin Roberti of Accu-Weather wrote Thursday afternoon that a few snowflakes could fall this weekend in the southern Appalachians.

We won't see snow here in Charlotte, but we also probably won't see anything warmer than the 60s until the early part of next week.

This pattern was set in place in late February, when a Greenland block became established -- high pressure over Greenland that stopped the typical west-to-east flow of systems across the United States. Instead, we got a steady dose of cold air pushed to the southeast out of Canada and Alaska.

In recent weeks, the persistent pattern has been cool high pressure over New England. That situation frequently has created cold air wedges in the Charlotte region, producing cloudy, chilly, damp days.

Meteorologists warned residents north of the Ohio River that late April and early May would not be fun. But that nasty weather pushed into parts of the South at times, too.

The only good thing is we've managed to avoid major outbreaks of severe weather this spring.

WCNC meteorologist Brad Panovich noted the other day that the busiest tornado month so far in 2013 was January -- in the heart of winter. The typically stormy months of March and April have been anything but.