July was a very rainy month in New Jersey and other parts of the eastern United States, thanks to a tropical weather pattern. (Jason Malmont | PennLive)
By Len Melisurgo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Mother Nature wasn't very kind to New Jersey in July. The Sunnyside section of Franklin Township in Hunterdon County wasn't so sunny. And the weather in Point Pleasant wasn't too pleasant.
In fact, it rained in Point Pleasant on nine of the last 17 days of the month. In all, nearly 9 inches of water accumulated in the Shore community's rain gauge that's monitored by the New Jersey Weather & Climate Network at Rutgers University.
The story was the same in many other parts of the Garden State last month, with our region stuck in a pesky weather pattern dominated by cloudy skies and tropical moisture.
Towns with the most rain
How bad was it? Check out the numbers in the Middlesex County township of Woodbridge, which got pounded by heavy thunderstorms and flash flooding last Friday, and other rain storms the previous two weeks.
Of the more than 300 climate stations monitored by Rutgers and the National Weather Service, the one in Woodbridge collected the most rain in July -- a whopping 10.24 inches — not including any rain that may have fallen Tuesday night.
Rain gauges in Brick Township in Ocean County and Roxbury in Morris County also got hit hard last month, with nearly 9.7 inches of rain collected from July 1 through July 30.
Heavy rain across New Jersey in July made driving difficult. (Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media)
What's normal?
Based on 30-year averages, the Garden State normally gets 4.57 inches of rain during the month of July. Broken down by region, North Jersey normally receives the most — 4.75 inches — while South Jersey usually gets 4.49 inches and coastal sections of Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth and Ocean normally get 4.16 inches.
Dozens of towns, particularly in the northern half of the state, ended up with far more rain than they usually get. And some got almost twice as much as usual.
Despite all the rain, July 2018 is on pace to be just the 24th wettest July on record when you add up all the rainfall totals and average out the number in each region, said Mathieu Gerbush, the assistant state climatologist at Rutgers University.
Gerbush said there’s an outside chance this July could crack the Top 20 in terms of rainfall, but it was nowhere close to the record statewide average of 11.37 inches of rain. That record was set way back in 1897.
July rain totals, county by county
MORE WEATHER: Severe thunderstorm threat, heavy rain in Wednesday forecast
How much rain fell in your town? Here’s a look at the top rainfall totals reported in each of New Jersey's 21 counties during the first 30 days of July.
Most of these statistics were compiled by the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, better known as CoCoRaHS, a volunteer network of trained weather observers overeen by the office of New Jersey State Climatologist David Robinson at Rutgers.
Some numbers are from the New Jersey Weather & Climate Network, and some are from the National Weather Service offices in Mount Holly and Upton, N.Y.
Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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