Think it's been cold this year? Wait till tonight

It'll be so cold you might see a chicken with a capon.

It'd be funny if it weren't so darn cold.

Here it is March 3 and one of the most frigid air masses of the season will descend on the area tonight.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, are calling for low temperatures around -4 tonight in Sanford, Maine, andt Rochester, and low-lying areas could see temps drop another 10 degrees below that. 

That’s because colder air is heavier and settles into valleys and lower elevations, said Michael Ekster, a meteorologist at the Gray facility.

“You could drive a mile and find temperatures 10 degrees different depending on the elevation,” he said today.

Ekster said a substantial arctic air mass up in Canada will be ushering in the frigid conditions, but during the week temperatures will slowly climb.

He said while there have been many cold Marches since weather highs and lows began being recorded late in the 1800s, they have been less frequent in the past 30 years and we have become spoiled with warmer March temps. Ekster said the lows tonight will make for an old-timey March chill, with the lows a full 20 degrees below the 30-year norm.

Even with this cold snap, however, he said this year’s temperatures have been nowhere as historic as some would have you think.

He said the average temperature for January was about one degree colder than normal and February was about 5 degrees colder than the 30-year average.

He said this year’s snowfall so far has totaled about 74 inches, with the normal amount for an entire winter usually around 60 inches. Last year we saw several large storms and totaled almost 82 inches.

He said after the current cold snap abates, temps will slowly moderate, with no drastic warmups in sight.

“We could have a warm day this week when it goes into the 30s, but it will fall back into the 20s by the next day,” he said.