March was the warmest on record in Baton Rouge

The National Weather Service says the average temperature at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport in March was a pleasant 68.7 degrees—7.2 degrees above the historical average and the warmest on record. The old record of 68.3 degrees was set in March 1945. But March wasn’t all sunshine. Though the NWS says it was a “fairly dry month with only 10 days of measurable rainfall,” the 6.42 inches of rain recorded at the airport made it the 16th wettest on record. More than half that rain—3.37 inches—fell in a single day, March 21, also a record. Despite the record warmth on average, Baton Rouge did not break any single-day high temperature records last month. The NWS says it was also the warmest March on record in New Orleans—with “a whopping 70.7 degrees” average—and 8.1 degrees above the historical norm. The old record in the Crescent City was 67.2 degrees, set in 1974. The contiguous United States also experienced the warmest March on record, dating back to 1895, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Thousands of daily temperature records were set in the lower 48 states over the month.