Thunderstorms Roll Through New Jersey on Tuesday Night

Coming home from a seminar that I was at in South Brunswick, I could see the flashes of lightning off in the distance as I was about to get off Interstate 287 in Piscataway. I checked the radar when I got home, and found that a solid line of storms was pushing into New Jersey from the west.

The flashes of lightning became more vivid and intense over the next two hours as the line of storms held up as they pushed through Eastern Pennsylvania into New Jersey. It was quite a light show. The lightning went on for about 20 minutes before the rain started to fall. Winds began to pick up as well.

The National Weather Service office in Mount Holly, New Jersey issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for a line of storms pushing through western New Jersey into Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon, and Mercer County. Winds with these cells of storms were estimated by radar up to 70 miles per hour with an isolated tornado possible along with hail the size of a penny, or approximately 3/4 of an inch.

Towns and cities that were in the path of these storms included: Carteret, East Brunswick, Edison, New Brunswick, North Brunswick, Old Bridge, Perth Amboy, Sayreville, and South Brunswick in Middlesex County. The storms moved over Greg’s Weather Center in South Plainfield, and brought torrential rains, gusty winds, and vivid lightning.

These storms were the first in two lines of storms that ushered in relatively cooler and drier air. At 1:24 PM on Tuesday afternoon, the temperature was already up to 87 degrees at GWC in South Plainfield, NJ. Dew point was up to 78 for a heat index of 100. It didn’t stop there either. The high temperature at GWC on Tuesday was 92 degrees with a heat index of 103.

About 24 hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, the temperature was only 80 degrees with a dew point of 58 for a heat index of 80 degrees. This is only the beginning. More cooler and drier air will be moving in over the next 12 to 24 hours, which will result in a more fall like feel to the air around Central Jersey. By Saturday and Sunday, temperatures will be only topping out in the mid 70s.

Meanwhile, the tropics are stirring up again. Harvey’s remnants have regenerated into a depression, and could become a storm again very soon, and perhaps even a minimal hurricane in the Western Gulf of Mexico by this weekend. In addition, there is another area of disturbed weather near the Bahamas in the Atlantic that is bringing heavy rains to South Florida. More on those things later.