While there has been somewhat of a focus on the tropics with Fay and now Gustav, the weather here in the Central Jersey area has been very nice. Although temperatures were on the increase a bit over the weekend, especially on Sunday, the conditions couldn’t have been any better. Nice high, thin cirrus clouds, blue skies, breezy conditions, and comfortable temperatures. Not a bad way to finish up the summer. If you were wrapping up your summer with a long awaited trip down to the Jersey Shore, you couldn’t have picked a better time to do it.

According to the recently posted data to the Greg’s Weather Center web site, the mean temperature over the past ten days has been 68.8 degrees with the maximum high temperature of 86.7 degrees observed on August 18th. The mean high temperature for the period has been 78.7 degrees. The minimum low temperature for the same period was 52.1 degrees on August 20th while the mean low temperature for the period has been 58.9 degrees. Another sign that we are now on the down side of summer, and slowly progressing toward winter is with the number of cooling degree days and the number of heating degree days.

Over the last ten or eleven days, there have been only 49 cooling degree days while there have been 7.4 heating degree days. Rainfall during the period has been minimal for the most part with a total of 0.11 inches of rain including 0.03 inches on August 19th. More of the same nice weather is expected for the rest of Wednesday, and even some of Thursday. However, the remnants of Tropical Storm Fay will be slowly creeping into the area, and spread some rain in the form of showers with perhaps a thunderstorm. Things will clear out though just in time for the Labor Day Weekend.