Brackets busted, records broken: the month of March lived up to the madness of its reputation by providing Hoosiers with as much roller coaster weather as it did basketball. We experienced record-breaking heat, snow days, severe thunderstorms, and massive temperature swings. It was everything you would expect to see for the start of spring in Indiana.

Record-breaking heat

Only a few days into the month, we broke a record high temperature. On March 5th, a day when the city was buzzing with visitors for the Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament, Indianapolis reached a high temperature of 77° at 3:12 PM. That broke the previous record of 75° set in 1956 and tied in 1983. Weather records began for the Indianapolis area in February 1871.

Big temperature swings

No more than one week later, we came extremely close to breaking another record in the opposite direction: COLDEST *high* temperature. Indianapolis went from a record-breaking 77° high on one Saturday, to a measly 26° high the following Saturday. We fell just short though, as the record for coldest high temperature on March 12th remains at 24° set in 1932.

Severe Weather

There were a few severe weather days for Central Indiana during March. We experienced severe thunderstorms, tornado warnings, severe hail, wind damage, and flooding to name a few. On the following days, some type of storm report was recorded in official Storm Prediction Center data.

• March 5th – Wind, Tornado reports in Indiana
• March 6th – Wind, Tornado
• March 18th – Tornado
• March 23rd – Hail
• March 25th – Wind
• March 30th – Wind

Click on the dates to watch our forecasts during severe weather!

Wetter than average Month

Total precipitation was about an inch higher than average for March. We observed 4.67″ of precipitation, which makes this a wetter than average month. Total precipitation for March is normally 3.69″. The record highest amount ever observed during March was 10.95″ back in 1904.

The highest single-day precipitation total of the month came on March 7th, when Indianapolis recorded 1.77″ of rain.

The extra inch of rain this month helped us to surpass normal precipitation totals for the year-to-date. So far this year, a normal amount of precipitation would be 9.24″. We have observed 10.38″ through March 31st.

Less snowfall than normal

Total snowfall for the Indianapolis area in March is normally 3.2″. We fell short of that, and have only observed “trace” amounts for March 2022. In the record books, you will see this recorded as “T”.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t get any snow for the month. Just none that was “measurable” at the specific site to be included in the climate report. Below you can check out some of our forecasts that covered snow showers from March 2022.

Temperatures close to normal

This month clearly saw plenty of warm days, and plenty of cool ones. Despite moving through the last day with an afternoon temperature swing ~30° colder than the day before, we ran a smidge warmer overall. Indianapolis observed an average temperature of 45.5° this month, which is close the normal 42.5° average temperature from March 1st – March 31st.

Average high and low temperatures were overall slightly above average:
55.9° observed max temperature –> 51.9° normal max temperature
35.1° observed min temperature –> 33.0° normal min temperature

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