So Much For The Nice Weather

Lack Of Rain Raises Concern For Drought In Jersey

If you recall earlier this spring, I had posted an article in the blog about the quiet overall weather pattern that had dominated the Garden State in recent months.  After the heavy rains of August and September that included the deluges from Hurricane Irene and the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, Mother Nature decided to ease up on New Jersey.

With the storminess and various types of severe weather had pummeled New Jersey with regularity over a span of 13 months from September 2010 to October 2011, the change was a welcome break for weary Garden State residents reeling from shoveling snow, power outages, downed trees, and flooding among other things.  However, the relief may end up being more of a curse than a blessing.

As mentioned repeatedly over the past several weeks in this blog, there hasn’t been a lot of precipitation so far this year.  Here in South Plainfield, we have only received 3.9 inches of rain through today.  The bulk of that, 2.28 inches, fell in the month of January.  There has been no measurable rainfall so far this month.  Snowfall levels this year were about 20 inches below average statewide.  If you go back even further to  October 2011, we have had only 13.75 inches of rain.  There was more rain in August 2011 alone.

Statewide, things have been a bit better, but not by much.  According to an article in Tuesday’s Star-Ledger, there has only been 6.03 inches of rain through the first three months of the year versus an average of 10.6 inches.  So far in April, there has only been a paltry statewide average of 0.3 inches versus a monthly average of 4.06 inches.  Reservoir levels are still near normal despite a 15 percent drop since February.  In short, we have gone from the wettest year on record in 2011 to the early stages of a drought in 2012.

There have  been chances of rain recently, but the atmosphere has been too dry to let that rain get to the ground.  For example, there was a chance of rain on both Wednesday and Thursday last week, but nothing much really came of that.  There were some stray showers that fell in Ocean and Monmouth County, but nothing too substantial.  There was a chance of rain today, and by the looks of the radar, it appeared to be happening, but on the ground, it has been nothing more than a few sprinkles.

The reason for the lack of rainfall has been the extremely low humidity.  If you took a look around New Jersey today, you would have seen humidity levels in the 30 to 40 percent range.  There is not enough moisture in the atmosphere for storm systems like the one that brought severe weather this past weekend to tap into.  There is hope that will change soon though.  The seven day forecast is calling for significant rainfall from Saturday night into Sunday.  Probability of precipitation for that time frame is currently running between 70 and 80 percent.