Forecasts: Cold will be with us into March

Daylight-savings time begins March 8, a week from Sunday, when the sun will be setting at 7, and enough light for baseball practice will linger for a good 30 to 45 minutes longer.

Evidently, however, the clock change will do nothing to fast-forward the seasons, as the longer-term outlooks now see below-normal persisting through at least through the first 10 days of March.

Sunday broke a streak of 11 consecutive days of below-normal official temperatures in Philadelphia, thanks to several hours of snow-and-ice melting sunshine.

As we've noted, February is the big month for solar-radiation gain between the winter and summer solstices. The daily rate of gain in February is 40 to 50 percent greater than during the other months, based on calculations by Fred House, a Drexel University professor emeritus.

Despite that one-day warm-up, however, Philadelphia average temperature for the month was 26.1 through Sunday -- or better than 9 degrees lower than the February temperature in Kodiak, Alaska.

In its Monday morning update, the Commodity Weather Group, in Washington, foresaw the cold persisting through the first third of March.

WSI Corp., which serves energy interests, on Monday called for below-normal temperatures for March throughout the Northeast.

The government's Climate Prediction Center has cold persisting for the next two weeks.

CPC also has above-average precipitation for the two-week period. That noted, for a pleasant change not a single decent storm rumor is out there.