Celebrate The Summer In Berkeley With These 5 Events

BERKELEY, NJ — Summer isn’t so much a defined, 93-day season as it is a state of mind — and luckily those celebrating the summer solstice on Friday, June 20, long-regarded as the “official” start to summer, will find plenty to do around the Berkeley area.

Some ways to celebrate the summer solstice in our area include:

• Argos Farm in Forked River kicks off their Blue & BBQ Festival June 20 with music, food, dancing and more. See the details and get tickets here.
• Island Beach State Park hosts a Summer Solstice & Full Moon Party Friday evening, with yoga, meditation, music and more. Learn more here.
• Field of Dreams in Toms River will hold a Summer BBQ Friday evening. Find details here.
• Cruise into summer with the Sentimental Cruisers and their latest car show on Saturday at Lacey Township High School. Details are here.
• Also Saturday is the Lacey Township Food Truck and Music FEASTival with live music, gourmet food, a beer garden and more. Learn more here.

The sun travels its longest path through the sky on the day of the summer solstice, which occurs the exact moment it reaches its highest and northernmost points in the sky. In Berkeley, that’s at 10:42 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

The summer solstice is always the longest day of the year. On Friday, the sun will rise at 5:28 a.m. in Berkeley and will set at 8:28 p.m., meaning we’ll see about 15 hours of daylight.

The summer and winter solstices and spring and fall equinoxes herald the arrival of seasons.

As LiveScience explains “Solstices and equinoxes happen because Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun, which causes the seasons. On the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, so it receives the full glare of the sun's rays for the longest time and the day is therefore the longest.”

The arrival of the solstice doesn’t necessarily translate to high temperatures. The seasonal lag in the arrival of the hottest weather of the year is explained by the fact that our mostly watery planet needs time to absorb the heat, according to the Royal Meteorological Society.

The closer a person lives to the North Pole, the longer the day will be. At the North Pole itself, the sun won’t set at all on the Solstice. And at the South Pole, where the June solstice marks the beginning of astronomical winter, the sun won’t rise.

The summer solstice offers a short window to see electric blue noctilucent clouds. The highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere float about 50 miles above our planet's surface near the edge of space, which starts at an altitude of 62 miles.

As you’re filling out your summer calendar, block out a few dates for the summer meteor showers. The Delta Aquariids, Alpha Capricornids and the always-anticipated Perseids all start in July. The Perseids peak in mid-August. Famous for producing numerous fireballs, the Perseids run July 14-Sept. 1 and produce up to 100 shooting stars an hour at the peak.

Related

• 2025 Guide To Meteor Showers And Other Celestial Events

And, who knows, you may get a chance to see the aurora borealis, or northern lights. The sun remains in overdrive after having reached “solar maximum” in its 11-year cycle. The northern lights have already dipped far south of the Arctic range several times this year, and more activity is expected.

Activity during the current Solar Cycle 25 has surprised space weather scientists and forecasters. It is the most active on record, and they’re not quite sure why.

“It’s one of the many mysteries to unravel,” space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl explained in a briefing with reporters in October. He and others expect more northern lights displays outside the Arctic range in 2025, and perhaps into 2026.