Hot, humid summer of discontent comes to an end

The summer of 2018 will be remembered as one of the hottest ever in New Jersey.

In fact, it was the fifth warmest summer on record in Garden State.

“Our nighttime temperatures were more unusually warm than were our daytime temperatures, in part because it was so darn humid for much of the summer,” said Dave Robinson, state climatologist. “The humidity helps to hold in the daytime heat during the night. It doesn’t allow that daytime heating to escape.”

It was almost the 38th wettest summer in New Jersey. But it was the 10th wettest in the northern part of the state, where localized downpours caused flash flooding.

“We had eight days during the summer where one of our observers around the state — and we have several hundred observers — one or more had 4 inches or more rainfall,” Robinson said. “That’s essentially a month’s rainfall, in just a number of hours.”

As the autumn takes hold, we’ll snap out of the mild and moist weather pattern, he said. And the summer weather doesn’t mean we’re in store for a snowier-than-usual winter.