Good morning. I know that it has been a few days since I last posted anything to the web site. Unfortunately, I’ve been busy with basketball and my new job. It also didn’t help that on Saturday morning, I had some dizzy spells. Too much Pepperoni Pizza on Friday night I guess. The weather has definitely picked up in terms of temperature over the course of the early part of this month. Ever since Memorial Day, the mercury has been steadily climbing to levels that are more appropriate for this time of year.

After some stormy and wet weather came through Central Jersey last week, the sun returned with a vengeance as the first major heat wave of the season is now upon us. Looking at the latest data from the Greg’s WX Center Weather Station here in South Plainfield, the temperature climbed to almost 94 on Saturday and then a bit more than 93 on Sunday. I happened to be out playing basketball and walking on Sunday, and it was a doozy out there. Very hot. Thank goodness I brought my water along for the ride. In spite of that, I was able to put in a very good workout of playing basketball for a little more than a half an hour, and walk for about another 45 minutes. Then, I wrapped things up by doing some jumping jacks, squats, and toe raises. I’m really starting to get into the whole Nikeplus.com thing with my iPod Nano and it’s Nike+iPod sensor.

On Sunday night, severe weather rolled through the Central Jersey area with Thunderstorms producing warnings in several counties in New Jersey including: Morris, Sussex, and Warren up until 10:00 PM last night. Those storms came through Northwestern Middlesex County later on in the evening, and created some loud rumbles of thunder along with a heavy downpour for a bit before moving southeastward into Northern Monmouth County. During the 11:30 PM newscasts, you could see how the radar over Monmouth County, Raritan Bay, and even Staten Island was lit up like a Christmas tree. In spite of all that, there was only 0.03 inches of rain that fell here in South Plainfield. Speaking of rain, there has been only three days of measurable rain this month including 0.92 inches of rainfall on June 4th.

Looking at the data for the year so far, this past May moved into first place for the wettest month of the year so far with 4.65 inches. The previous monthly high was 4.61 inches for the month of February. You can definitely tell that the mercury is picking up when you see the number of cooling degree days drastically jump to 62.3 so far here in June after only 16.0 in May. There had been only 17.7 for the year prior to this month. Now there is a total of 80 for the year. The mean temperature so far this month is 71.9 with the average max being 81.4 while the average min is 62.4. There is a heat advisory in effect for the region again today, and we should expect the same for tomorrow as today’s high is expected to reach 99 with a heat index of 102 while tomorrow’s high is expected to climb to 97 before thunderstorms roll in. Some are anticipated to be severe.