May Overview

As climatological summer and the Atlantic hurricane season begin on June 1, scientists are carefully monitoring sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean for a potential El Niño event. An El Niño occurs when warmer-than-average waters start to form in the eastern Pacific Ocean, specifically near the equatorial latitudes. Easterly winds (blowing from the east) typically move warmer water to the western Pacific (near Indonesia), permitting cooler water to upwell to the surface in the east (near South America).

Was it a drier-than-average April? Was it a wetter-than-average April? If only it hadn't rained heavily on the last day of the month! Certainly this is a strange beginning to this monthly weather narrative. Let me explain before we get to the numbers.

Copious moisture streaming across a slowly advancing warm front resulted in a period of heavy rain across the Garden State, with most of the rainfall occurring on April 30th.

Our now-retired web site that for many years dutifully disseminated valuable New Jersey weather and climate data to citizens, educators, government officials and agencies, emergency managers and more was in need of an update. Today, we're pleased to make our new web site available to the general public for the first time. This latest incarnation of the New Jersey Weather and Climate Network, which can now be found here at www.njweather.org, includes a bevy of new features and usability enhancements. In the coming weeks and months, we'll delve further into these new features and enhancements via blog posts introducing and detailing how to take advantage of them. For the time being, please explore the list below that briefly summarizes some of the new improvements and additions.

April showers typically bring May flowers, but when they fail to arrive in abundance and bundled with low humidity and gusty winds, wildfires become a major risk. Just such a scenario unfolded across New Jersey experienced on Thursday April 24.

There are many weather- and climate-related opportunities for undergraduate meteorology majors at Rutgers. One opportunity available to undergraduates is to become a student observer at the Cooperative observing station at the Rutgers Gardens.

One of the most disruptive winters in recent memory continued to deliver cold weather throughout New Jersey during March. Three snow events brought over 20" of snow to Cape May County, yet failed to bring more than flurries to northern counties.

Depending on where you live in New Jersey, this past month could have been extremely winter-like, or on the other hand, extremely not.

February Overview

One of the more disruptive winters in recent decades continued during February, erasing the hopes of many for an early spring.

December Overview