May 2025 Weather Recap: Rainy, With Chilly Last Two Weeks
With 6.58” of rain, May 2025 became the 15th wettest May on record in Central Park. This amount was 2.62" above average and was the most monthly precipitation since August 2024 (which had 7.02”). NYC's rainfall was considerably more than what fell at LaGuardia Airport (5.14"), Newark (4.81"), and JFK (4.43").
Rainfall was spread pretty evenly through the month. The greatest daily amounts fell on 5/14 (1.22"); 5/3 (0.95"); and 5/22 (0.90").
Despite temperatures being three degrees milder than average thru 5/18, the month, overall, was 0.9 degrees cooler than average as 5/19-31 had temperatures six degrees below average. (This was a mirror image of April, which was three degrees below average in the first 18 days and then finished seven degrees above average.) What made May cooler than average was the average high, which was 1.9 degrees below average while the average low was a smidge above average (+0.2).
The warmest reading was 85° on 5/3 (following a high of 84° on 5/2). The chilliest reading wasn’t until 5/23 (47°). In fact, there were no lows in the 40s until 5/20, which was the first of five in a row. (A reader pointed out that only May 1993 had its first reading in the 40s on a later date, on 5/21.)
An usually chilly day was 5/22, which had a high of only 51°. This was just four degrees above the month's chilliest low temperature (which was the following morning), 22 degrees below the average high, and the chilliest high on record for that date.
Mother’s Day 2025, with a high/low of 77°/58°, was the mildest in ten years. And for the first time since 2017, its high temperature was milder than that of Memorial Day (73°). Both holidays were celebrated under mostly clear skies.
Last May had seven days in a row with lows of 65° or milder, the longest such streak on record for May. By contrast, this May had no lows that mild, which was the first time this happened since May 2009. (Before 2010 this happened every three years). The warmest low was 63°, which occurred on 5/3 and 5/17.
Here are weather recaps of previous Mays:
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