Freehold is the nearest community for which a record of weather observations exists. Due to the proximity of Freehold to Colts Neck, the climatological record of Freehold is an accurate indicator of Colts Neck's climate.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climatological summary for Freehold, our area's climate "...is classified as continental, with only minor influence from the Atlantic Ocean. Summer temperatures seldom exceed 100 F, but there are frequent readings in the 90's from late May until early September. Winter readings below zero are infrequent. Normal mean temperature for the year is about 53 F."
"Considering the number of days between the last freezing temperature (32 F) in the Spring and the first freezing Fall as the vegetative growing season, this season averages 178 days in length, from April 23 to October 18. Temperatures of 32 F, or less, have been recorded as late as May 17th in the Spring, and as early as September 24th in the Fall." Figure 1 shows the monthly temperature means and extremes.
Precipitation in Freehold (Fig. 2) averages about 46 inches a year. The heaviest amounts normally occur during the Summer growing season. The drought which lasted from September, 1961 through August, 1966 was one of the most significant departures from normal precipitation in many years. Snowfall averages about 26 inches a season, but on occasion has been more than twice that amount. At other times. snowfall for an entire season has been less than one-half the long-term average.
Destructive storms are infrequent in the vicinity of Freehold. Summer thunderstorms occasionally combine high winds with heavy rainfall, and heavy rains have occurred in connection with hurricanes which move northward along the mid-Atlantic coast. A considerable portion of our Summer and Autumn rainfall comes from tropical storms which pass near the New Jersey coast.
The average number of heating degree days per year is 5,235. (Heating degree days are a measure of the departure of the mean daily temperature below 65 F, and is used as an index of the consumption of energy for space heating).
In the Colts Neck area, periods of very hot weather lasting as long as a week are associated with a west-southwest flow of air, which has a long trajectory overland on the left of the Bermuda high pressure system. Extremes of cold are related to rapidly moving outbreaks of cold air which travel southeastward from Canada's Hudson Bay region. The highest recorded temperature was 106 F (July, 1936), while the lowest was -20 F (February, 1934). The greatest daily rainfall was 5.68 inches, which occurred in Se ptember, 1938. The greatest daily snowfall was 12.8 inches in January, 1964. The greatest monthly snowfall was 26.0 inches in December, 1957 and the greatest amount of snowfall in one winter was 66.9 inches in 1957-58.
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