Even though it ended on a soggy note, September was far from the wettest month we've seen thus far in 2024.
In fact, year to date, it has been our driest month in terms of total rainfall accumulation, adding up to just above an inch and a half for the entire month. And over 80% of that rain came in the last 5 days of the month.
Compared to an average September at Central Park, where over four inches of rain can be expected, this year’s dearth of rainfall for the month led to a deficit well over two and a half inches.
And Central Park was not alone in its staggering lack of precipitation. Nearly all our major reporting sites ended September several inches below average, some of which ran deficits close to four inches.
This comes in stark contrast to what we experienced last September, where we ended the month as the second wettest on record in Central Park with over 14 inches of rain.
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Unsurprisingly, our dry September has left us with drier than normal conditions across much of the tristate, with moderate drought conditions starting to creep into South Jersey.
And unfortunately for those nascent drought conditions, the start of October is not looking very different from September, at least when it comes to precipitation. Except for a few sprinkles overnight into Saturday morning, our only real rain chance in the next ten days will be on Monday and those totals are unlikely to improve our drought conditions.
On the generous side, parts of our area could get close to half an inch of rain from the upcoming showers. More widespread, totals will be closer to a tenth of an inch, with many not even accumulating that much.
The more substantial rain is trending north of the city, which is especially unfortunate given that our more imminent drought concerns are all in South Jersey.
Even if the city does manage to get a half inch of rain out of Monday’s system, we would still have quite a way to go to overcome the autumn rainfall deficit September gave us.
But despite with our abnormally dry autumn, rainfall totals for the year to date are still running an inch above average. This is thanks in large part to our soggy spring; March alone logged over nine inches of rain. So there’s still plenty of time left in autumn to erase the deficit and get rid of the drought conditions; all it takes is one big storm. We just don’t have anything like that coming any time soon.
