FAIRMONT – The past few weeks, temperatures have shifted drastically between warm spring-summer and winter.

After temperatures in the 60s prior, March 16 and 17 brought several inches of snow. By the end of the week, much of it melted as temperatures returned to well above freezing. Now, temperatures go from 80 on Monday with a projection to drop the rest of the week.

According to the Fairmont Municipal Airport’s weather tracking, the max temperature for any given day in March has been as high as 82, and as low as 13. That max high of 82 blew away the previous record for March 21, which was 70 in 1938. March 25 and 30 nearly set records too, falling one degree short of the record 74 degrees in 2012 and 81 degrees in 1968, respectively.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein said having these fluctuations, even multiple in a row, is not entirely uncommon for this time of year.

“Given that we have usually some more powerful overall weather systems in the spring, which is moving around a lot of the air across the country and even across the continent,” he said. “You’ll see a system like we had, where we get a bunch of snow, it cools down briefly, it’s warm once again afterward, and all the snow melts.”

One reason Hasenstein cited for these stronger storms coming this time of year is the spring equinox.

“There’s something called differential heating, which is the difference in sunlight energy reaching the surface between the equator and the poles,” he said. “Now that we are past the spring equinox, that tends to get a little bit more intense than it was previously. What that tends to do is with a stronger pressure gradient, results in stronger weather systems.”

These stronger systems are also longer, potentially pulling warmer moisture from the Gulf and cold air from the Arctic Circle.

As for multiple of these phenomena happening in Martin County consecutively, Hasenstein said there is a slight change from previous years having an effect.

“It depends on where the upper-level winds are steering these types of systems,” he said. “This year, we’ve had some of the upper-level jet that’s been pointing more towards our region than in other years. One of the consequences of that is you’ll see more of these systems following this jet stream pattern and impacting the area more frequently, compared to a year where the jet stream is a little bit farther to the south and focuses more on Missouri, Iowa, Illinois.”

With these fluctuations, Hasenstein said it is increasing the potential for fire danger.

“You get what we call fire weather, which is hot, dry and windy,” he said. “In the cases where you have these intense warm-ups followed by cool-downs, that can intensify these conditions, especially with everything still a little bit dry. The plant life is just starting to come to life. When the fuels are that dry, and you have these fire weather conditions, it can lead to fire spreading rather quickly.”

While it will be gradual, Hasenstein said to get ready for cold weather later this week.

“We have a messy spring system that looks to come in late Wednesday into Thursday,” he said. “Maybe another round Friday into Saturday. We’re talking anything from periods of rain to a mix of rain and snow, even some freezing rain and then snow.”

After this, at least for the next couple of weeks, Hasenstein said everything is looking to settle down.

“The main thing would be, as far as temperatures go, we’ll get cold due to the wintry nature of the system this upcoming weekend,” he said. “We’ll gradually start to warm up again throughout next week. By middle to end of next week, we’ll probably have highs in the mid 50s, if not low 60s, and our lows will be in the 40s, rapidly returning to what would be considered normal to above normal for this time of year.”