Philadelphia Area Says Goodbye to a Record-Setting Spring

Monday is the last day of a spring that saw a tax-weekend deluge of rain and a two-day streak of record heat in the Philadelphia area, according to National Weather Service records.

The meteorological station at Philadelphia International Airport measured 3.1 inches of rain April 16, which shattered the record for that date: 2.4 inches in 1986. The April 16 storm also produced significantly more rain than fell in all of April 2010: 2.7 inches.

May was much drier, with 1.9 inches of rain in all, down from a still-below-average 2.5 inches in May 2010. The normal for May is 3.9 inches of rain.

High temperatures of 97 on June 8 and 99 on June 9 broke, by a couple degrees each, record highs set in 2008 and 1933, respectively.

March and April were cooler than last year with average temperatures of 44.1 (down from 48.3) and 56.8 (down from 58.4). This April was still the ninth-warmest on record; April 2010 was the third-warmest. A normal average temperature for April in Philadelphia is 53.1 degrees.

Besides being unusually warm, April also held the distinction of having zero clear days. The NWS judged 18 days of April to be cloudy and 12 to be partly cloudy.

May’s average temperature of 67.4, like last year’s 67.3 average, stood well above the normal of 63.5 degrees. The average temperature so far in June has been 74.7 degrees; the normal is 71.