New Jersey’s first heat wave of the year has been a brutal one, and it’s already a record-breaker as air temperatures have soared into the upper 90s to as high as 101° in some sections of the state.
The mercury at Newark Liberty International Airport, the main weather monitoring station in New Jersey, hit 98 degrees at about 1:15 p.m., then rose to 100 degrees by 2 p.m. and to 101 degrees by 3 p.m., setting the site’s new all-time record high for June 23.
Newark’s previous record was 99 degrees, set last year.
Farther south, in the Atlantic City area, the temperature rose to 98 degrees, matching its daily record high for June 23, set in 2024 and 1988.
Other hot spots in the Garden State include Hammonton in Atlantic County, where a reading of 101 degrees was reported by the Rutgers NJ Weather Network, and Oswego Lake in Burlington County, which clocked in at 100 degrees Monday afternoon.
By 3:45 p.m., the temperature in Oswego Lake rose to 101 degrees, the same high reached in Hackettstown in Warren County and Vineland in Cumberland County.
At least eight other towns and cities across the state hit 100 degrees as of 3:45 p.m. Monday.
As hot as that is, it feels even worse because of the high humidity. And forecasters are predicting even higher temperatures and a higher heat index — how hot it feels when you combine the regular air temperature and the humidity — on Tuesday.
Some parts of the Garden State could see temperatures soar as high as 102 to 103 degrees by Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
Hottest temps on record in N.J.
In case you’re wondering how much worse this intense heat can be, keep this in mind: The hottest temperature ever recorded in New Jersey was 110 degrees, back in July 1936, according to records from the office of the New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers University.
The 110-degree scorcher was recorded at a weather reporting station in the Runyon section of Old Bridge in Middlesex County. And by all accounts, that was the actual air temperature — not the “real-feel” heat index reading.
New Jersey almost reached that brutally high temperature 14 years ago. That’s when the thermometer at Newark Airport spiked to 108 degrees on July 22, 2011, during an intense summer heat wave.
On the same day in 2011, the mercury at Trenton Mercer Airport in Ewing hit 106 degrees, according to data from the National Weather Service. That turned out to be the second time on record that Trenton reached that steamy mark. The first was July 9, 1936.
The hottest temperature ever reported in Atlantic City was 106 degrees, on June 28 in 1969. More recently, in July 2011, Atlantic City had back-to-back days of the mercury soaring to 105 degrees.
Current weather radar
Stories by Len Melisurgo
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.
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