Good afternoon everyone. Well, there was severe weather in the Garden State after all. Ok, it depended upon where you were in New Jersey. If you were in extreme Northern Somerset County, and portions of Morris County, you probably saw strong to severe thunderstorms come through with gusty winds, heavy rain, and small hail. Here in South Plainfield, which is located in Northwestern Middlesex County, there was a good deal of wind and rain, but nothing as serious as what occurred in places such as Basking Ridge, Chester, Millington, Morristown, and East Hanover.

The storm originated near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and came through Eastern Pennsylvania into Sussex, Warren, and Morris County. Towns and communities such as Washington, Pleasant Valley, Califon, and Long Valley were between 9:20 and 9:30 PM EDT. Earlier, the storm moved through Blairstown, Andover, Newton, and Stanhope by about 8:50 PM EDT. Taking a look at the storm reports provided by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman Oklahoma, there were several reports of trees and power lines down that came out of Warren County and Somerset County on Tuesday night.

Trees and power lines were reported down in both Blairstown and White Township in Warren County while a report from Peapack and Gladstone in Somerset County indicated that tree limbs and power lines were down from the storm. Wind speeds in those reporting stations were not reported. On the other hand, during the severe weather that struck on March 8th, there were many more reports, especially in South Jersey. In total, there were four times as many reports during that severe weather outbreak.

In South Plainfield, there was a quarter of an inch of rain that fell from last night and yesterday. On Monday, about a tenth of an inch fell here. Couple that with the one hundredth of an inch that fell after midnight this morning, and you already have some .35 hundredths of an inch of rain that has fallen. High temperature yesterday topped out at 68.5 degrees while the low was 55 degrees. The high this morning (Wednesday, April 2nd) was 57 degrees, but the mercury steadily fell through the night, and reached a low of 38.9 around 6:40 AM. Currently, the temperature is hovering around 49 and 50 degrees.

Looking at how the winds have been behaving, the highest wind gust during the storm occurred around 9:40 PM Tuesday night with winds getting as high as 35 mph. However, during the day on Wednesday, the highest wind gust has increased to 45 mph as high pressure moves in from the West and pushes the remainder of the storm out to sea. So far this year, the average high in South Plainfield has been 48.8 degrees while the average low has been 32.5 degrees. Total rainfall thus far in 2008 has been 9.88 inches. There have been 42 days this year with at least .01 inches of rain, 22 days with at least 0.1 inches of rain, and 2 days this year with at least an inch of rain.