WASHINGTON — We all know how meltingly hot it can get around here, and there’s an early hint of what might be coming this summer.

El Nino – a warming of the ocean’s surface in the Pacific – is back, and the National Weather Service says the odds are good that it will stick around into the summer, and even fall.

“What that means for us, more times than not (is that) the summer is seasonable or a little bit below normal,” says NBC4 Meteorologist Amelia Segal.

“It also means when we have an El Nino that it could be a quiet hurricane season for us.”

Segal says spring in our region has been pretty normal so far, but it got a slow start.

“You also have to think about the cherry blossoms, always a pretty good indicator around here as to our spring, and they were behind schedule. They were behind their normal peak bloom date.”

She says normal average highs for this time of year are about 70 degrees.

“However, in the near term, it is looking like as we close out April, temperatures are going to be a little bit below average,” she says.