by Kristen Wile

With the Carolinas’ best dining weather creeping up on the calendar, we spoke with WCNC Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich for Charlotte’s patio season forecast. Here’s what WXBrad had to share about when patio season starts, where we’re at with pollen, and where you can find him dining outside around town.

Unpretentious Palate: Do you have any predictions for when patio season will be in full swing instead of these start and stops?
Brad Panovich: Well, it kind of started early this year. The cold snaps are actually more normal than the warm snaps this time of year. We kind of got tricked a little bit. March ended up being like the third warmest March on record. We had 10 days of 80+. Tomorrow could be day 11, which is the most all time in the month of March. It had never been this warm, and that’s also why the pollen season’s been crazy early. Everything’s blooming and growing. 

Typically to me April is the sweet spot. April and October in the Carolinas to me are the best time of year because you get these warm but not humid afternoons and these nice cool, mild nights. To me, that’s the best time of year for patios because it’s perfect weather. You can wear anything and not feel cold or feel hot and you’re not dealing with the mosquitoes yet. 

The only problem this time of year is pollen, but that’s pretty easy to deal with if the restaurants just wash everything down and you’re good to go, so I think we’re just now starting to get into that sweet spot as we get into April and even into mid-May before you start getting, you know, kind of hot or humid. Sometimes we can get lucky and get all the way to Memorial Day before it’s super hot or you need fans or misters. To me, right now we’re just getting to that sweet spot. March I think tricked people a little bit, maybe got them excited early.

UP: Those early hot spells, do they mean anything for how long patio season will last before it gets too hot? Should we expect it to end earlier, or is that not related? 
BP: Not really related. I think we think seasons are more interconnected than they are; transition seasons like spring and fall, they’re just not good indicators of what the summer’s going to be like, or the winter. 

The problem this time of year is early March, early April, you still can get a pretty chilly day here and there. The one thing that’s actually helped us out — it’s not been great for everybody, but it’s been pretty good for outdoor activities — we’re in a drought. It hasn’t rained at all, so that’s actually kind of opened a wider window, and if the drought continues, it could actually make patio season a little bit better.

It really comes to timing. It’s kind of funny, when it rains on the weekends and it doesn’t rain Monday through Friday, people think it rains all the time because it’s on the day that they want to be outside doing something. In a perfect world where it rains while people are sleeping, it’s like we get the best of both worlds. We get the rain, we get everything nice and green, we’re not in a drought, and it doesn’t rain on people’s patios and outdoor plans. So it really comes down to timing more than anything. 

UP: Tell us a little bit about pollen. You mentioned that’s been worse earlier than normal. Will pollen season end sooner? 
BP: The last couple of years, the winters have been super warm and we’ve had super early pollen seasons, like starting in February. This year, because we had that cold weather in January/early February, we actually had a normal winter for once. I think everyone thinks it was this cold, horrible winter. Outside of the big snow, which was the biggest storm we’ve seen in a while, the winter was actually 0.1 degrees above average. But what happened is when March hit, we got super warm really quick and it stayed warm the first two weeks, so everything seemed to bloom at the exact same time.

In years past where the pollen might be kind of spread out, the concentration of pollen this year was really intense early. Now, in my experience, and I’ve talked to a lot of arborists, the trees just do their thing. Just because it starts early doesn’t mean they end early, outside of pine pollen, which is the yellow pine pollen that everybody sees everywhere. It was all over people’s cars the last two weeks. When that starts early, that tends to end early, so that might be something that is beneficial. It started and got out of the way and so when we get into April, which is normally the peak of pollen season, we might be past some of the worst pollen.

April this year actually could end up being a little bit better than years past because maybe we got all the pollen out. The quicker these trees get leaves on them, the quicker we’re out of pollen season. So the good news is I’m looking at my yard right now, I’d say half to three quarter of the trees have leaves now, not buds or flowers, which means we’re getting close to the end of pollen season, maybe earlier. 

UP: Is there anything else that you think weather-wise will affect patio season this spring? 
BP: The only other thing that I’m worried about, and we’ve seen this a lot the last couple of days is the wildfires. There’s not gonna be wildfires in Charlotte, but smoke, right? If we get into a bunch of air quality issues, that would be my only concern, and that’s where the drought can be a big negative.

If we see a bunch of wildfires to our west and southwest, they don’t even have to be anywhere near Charlotte, and we get a southwest wind, then I would be worried about poor air quality days because nobody wants to be sitting outside when it’s smoky, hazy, or if you have respiratory issues. …If I had to pick one that maybe could throw people for a loop that you’re not really expecting, it’s a sunny, beautiful day, no rain, ‘I’m gonna go sit on the patio,’ and then boom, we’re socked in with smoke. 

UP: What are your favorite restaurant patios? 
BP: I do a lot of breweries. I’m definitely a big brewery guy. I love Protagonist; I’ve got to give them a shout because we go there for Ohio State Buckeye games. Love it, love, love sitting outside there. It’s one of my favorite places to go to get outside. One of my other favorite places we sit outside quite a bit at Blackfinn [Ameripub], one of my favorite patios down in the Ballantyne area and very underrated. It’s got a very diverse menu, especially if you have kids.

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