Unless temperatures drop 140 degrees below zero on Thursday, this December will go down as the warmest ever in New Jersey.

This probably comes as no surprise to folks who were wearing shorts and a t-shirt on Christmas Eve.

According to state climatologist Dr. Dave Robinson at Rutgers University, December 2015 is ending with an average temperature of 47.4 degrees, and that's impressive for a few reasons.

  • It's the warmest December on record.
  • That's 11.8 degrees above an average December. Only one other month ever, January 1932, ended at least 11 degrees above normal.
  • It shatters the previous December record from 2006 by 5.7 degrees. That's now the biggest spread between the first and second-warmest averages for any month in New Jersey.

"This month we were just warm from beginning to end with every day above average, and very few days when temperatures got below freezing," Robinson told New Jersey 101.5.

The state did not manage to break a record for the warmest December day. Locations reached the mid 70s in December 1984 and December 1998, but a lack of sunshine forced temperatures to settle around 70 degrees on Christmas Eve this year.

Taking all 12 months into account, the average 2015 temperature in New Jersey comes in around 53.8 degrees, ranking as the 18th warmest year for the state.

Adding to the history books, February 2015 ranked as the third-coldest on record, May and September were the third-warmest and November was the fifth-warmest.

The state saw about 45 inches of rain in all of 2015. June was the wettest month; May was the driest.

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