Spring season was action-packed

A look back at the just-ended spring season shows a variety of weather events and patterns and a season one expert describes as "action-packed."

Dave Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University, says spring is often a transitional season.

"It has a little bit of everything, and no question this year was that with an exclamation point," he said Wednesday.

It is Robinson's job to keep score on the weather and climate in the Garden State, as far as rain and snowfall and hot and cold temperature patterns are concerned, with records that date back in the state all the way to 1895.

"We had a cool March. But what was most notable about March was how snowy it was. It was our snowiest month of the entire winter season. With temperatures a little bit below normal, but actually cooler than in February. For the second year in a row, the last month of winter was milder than the first partial month of spring. Then we went along, and along came April, and with that, a lot of cool weather and a pretty good amount of rain."

Robinson says it was a tad cooler than average, but wetter than average, especially in South Jersey.
"The 'greening up' of everything was about two weeks behind," he said. "That changed on a dime when we got to May because the month proved to be the fifth-warmest May going back to 1895."

And the "action-packed" part of April, May and June?

"Just think back to how many of those weekends had a warm Saturday and a cold and rainy Sunday," he said.

He says North Jersey saw spring precipitation a bit below average.

Joe Cutter is the afternoon news anchor on New Jersey 101.5