Few April Showers This Year

    “As we look through the weather records from April 1 to April 30, we go through the temperature range of sometimes the 20s to the 60s by the month’s end,” Richard G. Hendrickson wrote in his April weather report from Bridgehampton. “This great variation is due in part to our location — 100 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, yet but a few miles from the mainland on the north.”

    “Southwesterly winds give our area warmer spring temperatures,” the United States Cooperative weather observer reported. Wind last month was from the southwest on 13 days, the prevailing summer direction. “When cooler easterly winds bring the cooler temperatures with showers, we are often in a two to three-day wet period.”

    Mr. Hendrickson, a retired farmer, said that one to three inches of rain can delay potato planting by three days. That wasn’t a problem last month. Rain fell on only two days in April — .15 of an inch on the 5th and 1.12 inches on the 12th. The long-term average for the month is 3 to 4 inches.

    “Few of us realize how beneficial the early spring rains are here to the many glacial-made freshwater ponds,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote. “They all have now perch, bass, sunfish, pickerel, and carp.” But he reminded readers: “You must have a New York State license to fish in these ponds.”

    He recorded 10 clear, 8 partly cloudy, and 12 cloudy days last month. In April, he said, “there is sometimes a freezing night, and often a fair snowfall!” The highest temperature last month came on the 9th, when it was 78 degrees, but that was the only day of the month with a temperature in the 70s. It was 60 or higher on seven other days and dropped down to 25 on April 2 and to the 20s on two nights.

    “Spring is on the way,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote, “but eastern Long Island is out in the Atlantic Ocean and that is the largest factor that governs our weather, as it always has.”