Good evening everyone. The National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly, New Jersey has issued a Flash Flood Watch for much of New Jersey including Middlesex County. Heavy rain has fallen in many parts of the Garden State today, and much more is on the way tonight and Saturday. Looking at the latest Doppler Radar imagery from the NWS, rainfall encompasses the entire region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.

Right now, light to moderate rainfall is falling across Middlesex County, but more rain is coming from the south and west. Heavy rains are falling in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Maryland. Meanwhile, steams of showers and thunderstorms are rolling across Delaware and Southern Jersey. Rainfall amounts across the Garden State in the past hour have ranged from a tenth to a quarter of an inch while storm rainfall totals have ranged between an inch and a half to two and a half inches across portions of Central Jersey. Meanwhile, further south along the Jersey Shore, rainfall amounts have ranged between 2 to 5 iinches.

Further to the Southwest across Southeastern Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland, doppler radar indicates rainfall amounts ranging from 2 to 8 inches as well with some locations near Baltimore receiving in upwards of 10 inches. All of this rainfall is due to several features on our map tonight. One is a warm front that is lifting to the north. Two is an upper level low to our south pushing northward, and finally there is a cold front pushing in from the Midwest. In the midsection of the country there has been torrential rains, particularly in Iowa over the past several days.

The silver lining in all of this is that the upper level low and warm front are helping to keep Tropical Storm Danny from strengthening and coming onshore along the East Coast of the United States. The fourth named storm of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season is expected to pass near the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Saturday morning, and then race up the Eastern Seaboard during the day before clipping Southeastern Massachusetts by Saturday night. Danny is expected to be extratropical by Sunday.