Third Straight Summer with Double Digit Rainfall

With the torrential rainfall that occurred in June, and the rainy start to August has put the Summer of 2013 on pace to be the wettest in three years at GWC. It still does have its work cut out though to catch up to the Summer of 2011, which had the bulk of its rainfall come during the month of August. As of today, there has been 14.49 inches of rain at the Greg’s Weather Center Wx station in South Plainfield during the Summer of 2013. Of that, 3.40 inches has fallen in just the first 14 days of August alone.

Last year, the summer months of June, July, and August produced 12.05 inches of rain. Two years ago, that same period of meteorological summer produced 18.67 inches of rain. August has been a particularly wet month over the past three years. Over the past three summers, there has been exactly 24 inches of rainfall during the month of August at GWC. The bulk of that came with the Deluge of August 2011 with 15.24 inches of rain. The month of August over each of the last three years has started out auspiciously with significant rainfall. June has been the month with the second most rainfall over the past three years with 12.20 inches. Total rainfall over the last three summers to date has been 45.21 inches.

While July has had the least amount of rainfall over the past three summers, it has been the hottest month. Over the past three years, the average temperature in July has been 77.9 degrees. Both June and August’s average temperature during the last three years has been 72.7 degrees. Of the last three summers, the summer of 2011 was the warmest with an average temperature over the three months of June, July, and August of 76 degrees. July has enjoyed the peak temperature for the month over each of the past three summers. In 2011, July had a maximum temperature of 103.9. Then, in 2012, the mercury climbed to a peak of 102.3 in July. This year, it was a bit cooler at GWC with a peak of only 97.8.

This August has been much cooler than the past two. So far, over the first 14 days of the month, the average temperature has only been 71.33 degrees while its peak temperature has only been 84 degrees. Last summer, the peak temperature in August was 92 while in 2011, the peak was 94.5 degrees. The weather forecast for the next week will not help that average much either with high temperatures in South Plainfield only falling between the upper 70s to low 80s. However, the weather pattern is expected to change early next week with a return to more warmer and humid weather.