Over the past few months, I have been tracking the local weather versus "normal" and comparing that to NOAA's charts. The April data is not yet available from NOAA, but I will be interested to see whether the summary depicts this region as "near normal" or "above normal."
For February and March, Michigan had temperatures from 2° to 6° below the 1971-2000 average and yet the NOAA charts depicted that as "near normal." The local temperatures that I tracked were about 4° below that average.
For April, the local temperatures were 1.3° above the 30-year average, thanks to a very pleasant stretch of highs in the 70s... which subsequently dropped to highs in the 50s... below average. If NOAA's summary indicates that is anything more than "near normal," I would be very suspicious of their categorizations.
Overall, for February through April, the local temperatures were about 2.5° below the long-term average. Will that be "near normal?"
May is not exactly starting out balmy.
But it may end up an "average" day for this time of the year...