Philly’s weather has been topsy-turvy lately. Get used to it.

Philadelphia again is riding a temperature roller coaster, and after reaching another crest, another steep drop is coming.

The region has had an unusual sequence of daily high temperature swings of 20 degrees or more this month — including a steep drop Saturday into a wintry weekend that was followed by a sharp jump Monday to crack 60 degrees. In terms of temperature swings, this has been one of the more volatile months on record.

And despite a few warm days, a cold front is due to pass through the region Wednesday, with temperatures forecast to collapse 30 to 35 degrees by Thursday morning.

Get ready for more whiplash as we head toward spring.

What’s going on out there? The short answer: It’s that time of year.

Between winter and spring, the behavior of the atmosphere at our latitude is prone to ping-pong between the ebbing and the approaching seasons, almost as though it’s trying to figure out which one it wants to be. The first four months are the jumpiest time of year for temperatures, according to an Inquirer analysis of National Weather Service data recorded at Philadelphia International Airport.

Consider high temperatures, which swing on average 7 degrees from day to day in these months. But averages can conceal a lot. About half the time, the daily high temperature is within just 5 degrees of the previous day. The other half of the time, high temperatures differ by more than that.

Sometimes significantly more.

About one in four days from January through April sees a high temperature 10 degrees higher or lower than the previous day.

“It certainly can be crazy and jumpy,” said Dave Dombek, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc.

But while volatility is the rule, this February still stands out for the sheer frequency of those fluctuations.

Normally, temperatures swing by 20 degrees or more in one day about once every four weeks. Monday marked the fourth such sharp change this month. In 148 years of temperature records, less than 2% of months have had this many 20-degree swings.

And if temperatures drop by 30 degrees or more between Wednesday and Thursday, as predicted, this month will have a fifth daily high-temperature change of 20 degrees or more. That many big swings in one month has happened only nine times since 1874.

There’s one quirk of these records to note: A high temperature can be recorded at any time of day, even in the middle of the night. In the steepest overnight temperature drops, the warmest time of day could happen just after midnight, with temperatures falling through the rest of the overnight and never recovering.

Whether you look at whole-day or just daytime high temperatures, the result is the same: Lots of volatility around this time of year, but this month still stands out.

We’re probably not getting off this ride anytime soon.

Other factors are in play, but frontal systems are major drivers of the temperature swings.

Annually, Philadelphia and the rest of the midlatitudes in the Northern Hemisphere are caught in the crossfire between stubborn winter and ambitious spring, said Dombek and other atmospheric scientists. Cold and warm air typically remain plentiful in their source regions — namely, the Arctic and the tropics — as winter gets long in the tooth.

As the sun rapidly gains strength and the days lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere — Philly gains over an hour of daylight from Feb. 1 to March 1 — the warm air becomes ever more aggressive about surging northward, and ever-more likely to encounter resistance.

Potent frontal systems form along the boundaries of these contrasting air masses. As they plow west to east, the fronts can lure warm air northward on strong winds from the south, then deliver cold air in their wakes on gusts from the north, and that’s a big reason for big temperature swings this time of year.

So hold on to your hats and make sure you’re fastened in — it’s safe to expect more whiplash in the weeks ahead.