Nice Stretch Of Weather Coming To An End In Jersey

Approaching Cold Front To Bring Showers Friday Night

It has been a wonderful week here in New Jersey. Since last Saturday’s severe weather, conditions have been completely dry here in Northwestern Middlesex County as well as the rest of the Garden State. For five plus days, there has been no measurable rain here in South Plainfield. Meanwhile, temperature and dew point levels have dropped to more comfortable levels under sunny, blue skies.

Over the past seven days, the average temperature at GWC has been just under 67 degrees. High temperatures started out in the low to mid 70s in the early part of the week only to climb a bit over the past couple days to the upper 70s to near 80. Dew point levels have dropped off significantly. Prior to the severe thunderstorms on Saturday, the dew point peaked at 75.9 degrees. By the early part of the week, it had fallen to just 44.3 degrees. So far on Friday, it has been a bit higher at 63 degrees.

The past several days have been pretty much cloud free. Wednesday and Thursday were perfect while some cirrus clouds developed during the late morning and early afternoon on Friday. Those cirrus clouds could be a harbinger of things to come as a cold front is on the march from the west. The front stretches from Northern Michigan through Ohio back into Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky. This front has already created some concern in Western New York, which could have gusty thunderstorms with winds between 30 and 40 miles per hour later today and tonight.

The front should be as severe as last week’s cold front here in New Jersey. The front will be going through much later in the evening, and conditions while warmer and a bit more humid than they have been recently, aren’t anywhere near as unstable as they were last Saturday. There will be some showers coming through during the early morning hours on Saturday bringing about a tenth of an inch of rain. Speaking of rainfall, there has only been 0.78 inches of rain reported by the CoCoRaHS rain gauge while the Vantage Pro 2 gauge has recorded 0.69 so far this month. There has only been five days of measurable rain so far this month.

The lack of rain shouldn’t be too much cause for alarm since September is usually a dry month in New Jersey climatologically speaking. Back in 2011, there was 5.77 inches of rain at GWC, but most of that came from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee in the early part of the month. Average temperature so far in September at GWC has been 70.15 degrees, which is almost two degrees warmer than last year. The highest temperature this month was on the first day at 90 degrees while the lowest was 47 degrees earlier this week.