New Jersey Could Soon Be Facing Drought Conditions

2011 was one of the wettest months on record in New Jersey, but my how things have changed! It’s been so dry this year, that Jersey is now facing a possible drought scenario in the not-too-distant future.

State Climatologist at Rutgers Dave Robinson says “the first 3 months of 2012 were the 3^rd driest on record in New Jersey, and we have records going back to 1895- we’ve been getting increasingly drier as we’ve gone through January, February and March, and here we are in April, and very little rain has fallen.”

He says over the last 30 days we’ve had rainfall “that’s about 30 percent of average – and it’s been mild during that time too- we just had the warmest March on record, and the warmest first 3 months of the year- so we’ve got a lot of evaporation going on, we’ve had the strong winds, and very low relative humidity."

Robinson adds reservoir levels in most parts of the state are still at average levels – because of all the rain we had last year – but if the dry trend continues much longer, we could soon see a drought watch declared.