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BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
You can kiss the summer of ‘09 good-bye at 5:18 p.m., Tuesday.
And yes, this summer was like a blind date on the boardwalk that didn't go well at all.
It was the fifth wettest New Jersey summer since 1895 and the wettest in 34 years.
And if you think it was a cool summer, you are correct. The June-August average temperature was 71.9 degrees.
But following a cooler than average first half of the summer, warmer than normal temperatures invaded New Jersey during the last week of July and lingered through most of August, during which the state temperature averaged 75.5 degrees, which is 2.7 degrees above normal. The comeback tied last month with August of 1988 as the sixth warmest August since records began in 1895.
These facts came from the man with all the answers when it comes to New Jersey weather, Piscataway-based Prof. David A. Robinson, chairman of the Department of Geography at Rutgers University and state climatologist.Robinson also wants New Jerseyans to know that five of the ten warmest Augusts in the past 115 years have occurred during the last nine years. The hottest was in 200 5 when the average temperature was 77.4 degrees.
"In some defense of the vast majority of people who believe the summer was cooler than normal – including 68 of the 70 students in my Geography of New Jersey class – the average maximum temperature in June was more anomalously cool than the minimum, while August's minimum was more anomalously warm than the maximum, ‘' Robinson said. "Thus the coolness of June manifested itself more when you were a awake, while the warmth of August was more apparent at night.''
Robinson points out that the summer featured only one heat wave – seven days in August – where the maximum temperature equaled or exceeded 90 degrees for at least three consecutive days. There was another four-day heat wave in late April.
A total of 19.18 inches of rain fell between June 1 and Aug. 31, that's 6.34 inches above average. The wettest place in the state this summer was Mercer County where over 26 inches of rain was recorded in Lawrence and over 25 inches in Washington Township. Califon in Hunterdon County finished a wet third with over 24 inches of rain, and Glen Rock in Bergen County was fourth with over 23 inches.
The lowest rainfall was recorded at under 16 inches in Eatontown in Monmouth County, Middle Township in Cape May, and Bridgeton in Cumberland County.
The ray of sunshine amid the rainfall is that the state Department of Environmental Protection reports that for the first time since May 2007, water levels are above normal in each of the state's six drought tracking regions.
"It certainly was a very green summer across the Garden State,'' Robinson said.
