As the Easter weekend approaches, you might want to know how the weather is going to affect travel and outdoor activities over the next several days. Easter moves around the calendar each year so the weather can be anything from wintry to quite warm. This year we’ll enjoy a seasonably mild air mass.

Easter annually falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox occurred on March 20, the moon was full on March 23 and thus this Sunday is Easter.  There are celebrants of Easter who use the Julian calendar and the date is usually different.

This is why Easter can be celebrated as early as March 22, as it was in 1818 and will be again in 2285, or as late as April 23, as it was in the year 2000 and will be again in 2079.

Good Friday weather is looking rather wet. That storm which shut down the Denver airport Wednesday and is bringing up to a foot of snow to parts of the Midwest will head up into Canada late Thursday and Friday.  This will first pull very mild air into the region and then bring a period of rain and wind.

If you are headed to the mountains Friday there will be some freezing rain in the morning. There is a freezing rain advisory posted for inland areas.

Remember, it doesn’t take a lot of glazing to create very hazardous road conditions. The liquid equivalent won’t amount to much – generally one-quarter to one-half inch. Where it is freezing rain to the north, I don’t expect enough to create power issues, but travel will be slowed.

High temperatures Friday will be much milder with many areas getting well into the 50s.

As the weather system moves north and east of our skies, things will clear and the weekend is looking quite nice. Saturday is seasonably cool with highs in the upper 40s, almost average for the day. Easter Sunday is the nicer of the two weekend days with highs rising above 50 degrees with light winds. There will be a sea breeze along the immediate coastline keeping it cooler there.

If you are headed to sunrise services on Sunday, the sun comes up just after 6:30 a.m. and sets just after 7 p.m. for almost exactly 12 hours and 30 minutes of daylight.

Easter Sunday sunrise and sunset for Portland, ME (Courtesy TimeandDate.com)

Another rainstorm will start the workweek next week, but the details of how much and when are still up in the air. Have a great weekend.