Wednesday offered a preview of warmth to come, followed by an onslaught of snow Thursday.

It looks like the spring is going to be business as usual."This year, it just looks like a typical transition into spring," AccuWeather's Paul Pastelok, senior meteorologist and head of the long range forecasting department, said.Pastelok said that the long range department has not seen any extremes that could be indicative of a rough march into warmer temperatures, or the cold snaps that stretched late into the season a few years ago. In fact, the warm-up should come along faster than the last few years."March, it's typical that you can get some snow, some warm-ups," Pastelok said. "April looks like we're going to start to see more of a warm-up, especially around Easter."We'll have plenty of rain this spring."It may be a little wetter than usual, but it will be good for the plants and crops," Pastelok said.The Old Farmer's Almanac is calling for similar conditions, with March predictions hovering around 37 degrees.That's 3 degrees below normal and 3.5 inches of precipitation, half an inch above average.Snow showers, some flurries, and rain should be common throughout the month.The Almanac's call for April and May also falls in line with AccuWeather, wetter than normal and slighter cooler.That extra moisture could help build upon the surprising January weather, which alleviated some of the more dry areas. Pastelok and the other long range meteorologists had been expecting more snow for last month, as well as the accumulation of a snow pack, followed by some preliminary warm-up in February.Pastelok said it's the one-long range winter prediction where they were wrong."It's been helped out since we didn't get so much snow, we got rain," Pastelok said."This time of year, you usually have a hard ground, but we haven't had that. The rain is absorbing instead of running off the ice."So while Punxsutawney Phil may have been more or less correct about cool conditions, those April showers should provide for plenty of May flowers.