Monday was an absolutely beautiful day.   Yes, this past Monday.  You know, the one with the Nor'easter that threatened to cancel the 111th Boston Marathon and flooded basements and knocked out power throughout the Northeast.  Well, on that very same day, it was sunny without a cloud in the sky in Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.  I kid you not.

    The fact is Cape Cod, as WCVB meteorologist Dick Albert told me, "is perhaps the single most difficult place to predict weather in New England."  Not only is it geographically diverse, but the effects of the ocean, bays, sound and canal that surround it are almost impossible to predict in a forecast for the entire Cape.

    It is why Cape Cod business and tourism officials are no fans of the 5-day forecast.  The fact is would-be Cape visitors often begin changing plans by Tuesday or Wednesday if the forecast looks grim for the upcoming weekend.  The problem is what might be a cloudy or even rainy day in Boston could be a beautiful day on the Cape.

    At no time was that more evident than Monday.  Mind you the Cape got its share of wind and rain out of the Nor'easter. But when I arrived in Chatham around 1:00 that afternoon, it looked like a beautiful spring day.  Bright sun, clear skies, tulips in bloom.  In the greater Boston area it was still ominously cloudy, windy and raining heavily.

    Don't believe me?  Then tune in next Thursday night, April 26th when Chatham is featured in our "Spring Getaways" segment on Chronicle.  Even I wondered how we would make it work when I left my "near flood stage" basement at home and headed for Chatham on Monday.  It turns out not only was it a getaway, but it was actually spring!