Forecasters: Above normal temperatures likely for next two weeks

Ready for those crisp fall days?

You’ll just have to keep waiting, forecasters say.

The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecasts more than a 50% chance of above normal temperatures in New Jersey between October 8 and October 16. Between October 3 and October 7, temperatures statewide will be almost certainly above normal, according to current weather forecasting models. 

While temperatures are expected to drop from the 80s next week, they’ll remain relatively warm. 

In Toms River, the normal temperature for the first five days of October is about 70 degrees, dropping about one degree for each successive five day period, according to the Office of the New Jersey State Climatologist.

The news of continuing mild weather comes on the heels of the “September 2013 Summary” report issued Tuesday by Dr. David A. Robinson, the state’s climatologist, finding that statewide temperatures last month were below normal.

“September 2013 was the second consecutive month with the statewide average temperature coming in below normal. The 64.4° average was 1.8° below the 1981-2010 average. This ranks as the 40th coolest September since 1895, tied with 1920 and 1922, and the coolest since 1994,” the report states. 

But we know that the waning days of September were warm, so have we been experiencing what is commonly known as an Indian Summer?

Not quite. 

A National Weather Service historian writes that the most popular definition is as follows:

It is an abnormally warm and dry weather period, varying in length, that comes in the autumn time of the year, usually in October or November, and only after the first killing frost/freeze. There may be several occurrences of Indian Summer in a fall season or none at all.

With the exception of perhaps the highest elevations of northwest New Jersey, we haven’t experienced the first killing frost/freeze yet. 

But whatever you call it, it’s warm for October.