Warm fall fishing at Manasquan Inlet. (Photo: Daniel Nee)
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and there’s sand in the sheets after a relaxing day at the beach.
With Thursday’s forecast high in the 70s in the Shore area, it’s shaping up to be one of the warmest Christmas weeks on record. But what will it take to formally induct Christmas 2015 into the record books?
“The warmest day this week looks to be Thursday,” which is Christmas Eve, the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly said in a statement Monday night.
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By Christmas Day, the temperatures will moderate just a bit, down to the mid-60s, but with weather being something of an inexact science, there’s always the chance that a record will be broken. The NWS record books are based on data gathered at airports, with our local office relying on Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona as its primary base.
The record high for Dec. 23 is 65 degrees, set in 1990. For Christmas Eve, the record high is also 65 degrees, set in 1982. The Christmas Day record is 70 degrees, set in 1982.
According to the NWS’s forecast for this week in Pomona, Dec. 23 will be 66 degrees, Dec. 24 will be 71 degrees and Dec. 25 will be 63 degrees. So while it currently looks as if the Christmas Day record will not be broken, the 2015 highs for Christmas Eve and Dec. 23 may well make it into the record books.
For what it’s worth, the all-time record high for December at the airport is 77 degrees, set Dec. 7, 1998.
As for the remainder of the forecast, Dec. 23 will be cloudy with an 80 percent chance of showers; Christmas Eve will also be mostly cloudy, but with 20 percent chance of showers later in the day. Christmas Day will be mostly sunny.
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