Mother’s Day May Not Be a Weather Win

Weather
By Dan Skeldon

There are certain things they teach you on the first day as a meteorology major in college:

ALWAYS keep the weekends nice. In South Jersey…especially the holiday weekends!

Try to make dreams for a white Christmas come true for those dreaming of it.

Moms deserve nice weather on Mother’s Day.

Of course, until we find a way to actually control the weather, this is more a wishlist than anything else. After all, weekends are not always nice, and snow on Christmas is a rarity. And then there’s the issue of our Mother’s Day weather of late here in South Jersey. Our moms fill our lives with boatloads of sunshine, so the least ol’ Mother Nature can do is to fill mom’s big weekend in early May with some of that sun. But over the last five plus years, that’s apparently been a tall order.

Just look at the past few Mother’s Day here at the shore:

May 9, 2021: Highs stuck in the 50s with clouds and a little drizzle; the coolest day all month, except for Memorial Day weekend, which was even cooler and wetter. A double fail by Mother Nature.

May 10, 2020: A diamond in the rough and bright spot in the midst of a pandemic…as moms get a rare day of seasonable spring sunshine. But the day began chilly and even frosty for some.

May 12, 2019: Back in the mid 50s with a soaking 1-2 inches of a windswept rain. Doesn’t get much worse…although at least it wasn’t snow.

May 13, 2018: Not only were we mired in the mid 50s again with more rain on Sunday, but it was cool and wet the entire weekend.

May 14, 2017: The weather gods were a little nicer as Saturday was the cool and rainy soaker, but some rain spilled over into early Sunday. We did salvage a drier and warmer afternoon with highs into the low to mid 70s.

Sure, they haven’t all been bad. But considering our average high for early to mid May should be up in the lower half of the 70s, Mother’s Days have been on the cooler and often the cloudier and wetter side over the last 5 years.. To add insult to injury, dads have been getting spoiled with abundant sunshine and significantly warmer temperatures on Father’s Day, just one month later. Granted, they do teach you in meteorology that June is supposed to be warmer than May, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise that dads in June have better odds for warmer weather compared to moms in May. But over the last 5 years, the disparity has been pretty striking, with moms cooler than average and often cloudy and wet on Mother’s Day weekend. Meanwhile, South Jersey dads have been soaking up summery sunshine and enjoying mostly dry weather, save an isolated thunderstorm, on Father’s Days of late.

Unfortunately, there’s no instant cure for mom’s meteorological malaise. Chalk up our bad stretch of Mother’s Day weather simply to bad timing, bad luck, and more than anything else the calendar. Moms should always come first, but coming first on the calendar in May, especially in this part of the country, always runs the risk of that damp and dismal weather that early to mid spring is notorious for. Threats include raw northeast winds, back door cold fronts, late season coastal lows, or stubborn fog banks.  Sure enough, a similar pattern is setting up for Mother’s Day weekend 2022, at least in the longer range as I write this on the first day of May. A cool Canadian high to the north and a low pressure to the south likely means a cool onshore wind for mom’s big weekend. It could be cool and dry perhaps, but if that low pressure wins out, cool and wet may win again. Of course, there’s always a chance we’ll finally discover that way to control the weather between now and then, right?

Meanwhile, who wants to bet dads get another warm and sunny weekend one month from now?

Meteorologist Dan Skeldon has a degree in meteorology from Cornell University. He has forecasted the weather in South Jersey for the last 18 years, first on the former television station NBC40 and then on Longport Media radio. Dan has earned the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval for Broadcast Meteorologists, and now does television broadcasts on WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

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