Very warm air continues to invade the Garden State, making it feel more like summer than winter. Watch video
The calendar says it's still winter for another week and a half, but Mother Nature clearly doesn't pay attention to calendars.
During the past week, New Jersey's weather jumped from winter to spring to summer, with a slew of temperature records getting smashed along the way. And forecasters say more records will be erased from the weather history books before the sun goes down on this very mild Thursday.
Among the places that set new daily high temperature records on Wednesday were Newark (81 degrees), New Brunswick (82 degrees) and Trenton (80 degrees), while Atlantic City tied its March 9 record high of 78 degrees. Those readings are 30 to 35 degrees above the normal high of 47 for this time of year.
New records were also set Wednesday in Central Park in New York City (77 degrees), Philadelphia (82 degrees), Allentown (80 degrees) and Reading (80 degrees), according to the National Weather Service, which has weather monitoring stations in each of those cities.
For many places across New Jersey, including New Brunswick, Wednesday was the earliest day of the year that the temperature rose above 76 degrees, said New Jersey State Climatologist David Robinson at Rutgers University. Prior to this week, the latest reading of 76-degrees-plus in New Brunswick was in 1990, when the mercury hit 83 on March 14.
Everyone's a winner today! Our climate sites tied or broke daily record highs. Enjoy, it's extraordinary out there! pic.twitter.com/ZE0hlQe5gt
-- NWS Mount Holly (@NWS_MountHolly) March 9, 2016
As for Thursday, some new records were set even before lunchtime.
The National Weather Service said several places recorded their highest minimum daily temperatures for March 10 in the morning, including Atlantic City (55 degrees), Philadelphia (57 degrees) and Allentown, Pa. (54 degrees). A whole bunch of maximum daily temperatures are expected to set new records later in the day.
All this warm air has been flowing in from the south because of a big ridge of high pressure that's planted itself off the coast of the southeastern United States, near South Carolina.
Robinson said the atmospheric setup this week is similar to what New Jersey saw in December 2015, when spring-like weather invaded the state and scores of daily and monthly temperature records were broken.
The state climatologist isn't certain how long this trend will last, but said it's possible New Jersey could get a "a persistent period of above-average temperatures that even remain close to or above average when some cooling occurs."
If past history is any indication, New Jersey could end up with a cooler and wetter than usual April and May, according to a Rutgers analysis of spring weather conditions during years when a strong El Nino weather pattern is in play, as it is this year.
El Nino, a long period of substantial warming of surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is known to wreak havoc on weather patterns around the world.
Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality. Find NJ.com on Facebook.