Weather
By Dan Skeldon
They say that if you don’t like the weather in South Jersey, wait a few minutes (or drive a few miles down the road), and it will inevitably change. Well, it wasn’t a few minutes, but one weekend recently, the last weekend of April, that proved the old adage.
We went from drought to deluge in a manner of speaking over the last weekend of April. Well, we aren’t technically in a drought, like we were at the end of the growing season late last summer into the fall. But after a snowless winter and with rain scarce over the first month plus of spring, we were certainly abnormally dry, and heading towards a drought. In fact, parts of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even far North Jersey are indeed in a moderate drought at last check.
And as of the last Friday in April (April 28th), we had a 4 to 6 inch rainfall deficit for the year in South Jersey, not exactly where we want to be at the start of the growing season and with the summer heat perhaps only a month away. So it was safe to say that some rain was welcome at that point.
“Some” was the key adjective, as too much rain too quickly isn’t always a good thing. As it turns out, the latter was what Mother Nature delivered, with a soaking 4 to 6 inches of rain throughout South Jersey from Friday April 28th through Sunday April 30th. The deluge, plus brisk onshore winds, brought all types of flooding to the area, river and stream flooding, tidal flooding, and poor drainage flooding as well. And in the matter of one weekend, that 4 to 6 inch rainfall deficit that we had spent a quarter of a year building up was instantly erased. Sure, the weekend weather left much to be desired, but we are now in a much better place as the growing season really kicks into high gear as April turns into May.
But the weekend wasn’t a complete washout, at least not in far South Jersey. If you went to one of my favorite annual festivals in South Jersey, Somers Point Bayfest, you were probably delighted to see some sunshine. In fact, while the rest of New Jersey saw the gray and gloom and the drab and drizzly weather persist on that final Saturday in April, Cape May County soaked up the sunshine, and some of that sun crept across the Great Egg Harbor Bay into coastal Atlantic County as well. The Cape May peninsula is a fascinating forecasting study, as there are interconnected microscale forces at work that often leads it to have much different weather than the rest of the state, and sometimes even the rest of the New Jersey shore. I used to refer to it as the “Cape May bubble” during my NBC40 days. Only in Cape May County can you get Delaware Bay effect snow, or an occasional setup which features a land breeze and warm 80-degree beaches while beaches in Atlantic County on north are shivering in the 50s. Sure, the Cape saw 4 to 6 inches of rain like the rest of South Jersey over the last weekend of April, but snuck in a sunny Saturday while doing so to set itself apart from the rest of the state.
Now we turn the calendar to May, as outdoor events exponentially increase with each weekend we get closer to Memorial Day. And while an unseasonably cool pattern continues for the first few days of the month, a warmer pattern should take over for the second week of May. And for those waiting for this cool air to pass before planting those coveted Jersey tomato plants, remember that for South Jersey, Mother’s Day is always a good rule of thumb to start the growing season. While a frost or freeze can occasionally happen in mid to late May, the second weekend of May is typically when we’re safe to plant away, with only an occasional exception.
Finally, April 2023 is now in the books, wet finish and all. And despite the soggy conclusion, it was also the second warmest April on record in South Jersey, second only to April 2017. And like most of our Top 5 warmest lists from any month these days, (almost) all of the Top 5 finishers are recent years. For April, the Top 5 warmest have all occurred since 2010.
So here’s to a sunny and seasonable first weekend of May, and hopefully more evenly distributed rainfall throughout the rest of spring and summer. And in a perfect world, Mother Nature will keep all future rain away from our valuable late spring and summer weekends.
Meteorologist Dan Skeldon has a degree in meteorology from Cornell University. He has forecasted the weather in South Jersey for the last 18 years, first on the former television station NBC40 and then on Longport Media radio. Dan has earned the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval for Broadcast Meteorologists, and now does television broadcasts on WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
