winterwx21

Pouring and the gusty winds continue. A little thunder. Not severe but a good strong t-storm.

Getting some gusts over 40mph here before the heavy rain starts.

I'm excited that the storms in Somerset County are on track to hit here shortly.

93 here right now. Really hoping for a heavy downpour today to help out this parched ground. I've been watering the vegetable garden every day during this heat, but I'm not watering today in hopes that we get some rain. If the t-storms miss here this evening, we should at least see some steady light rain tomorrow morning.

And it continues to appear that most of that rain will be Saturday and Saturday night into Sunday morning. The models still move the rain out for Sunday afternoon. Obviously it won't be beautiful with cloudy/cool weather, but there is hope that it will be dry for cookouts Sunday afternoon and evening.

It hit 98 here. Newark hit 99, which tied the all time May high temp record.

95 here right now.

And Central Park got up to 88 today, which is a degree higher than it got yesterday. So much for today being the cooler day due to the backdoor front.

The backdoor cold front cooldown idea for today was a complete fail. Probably 98 or 99 for tomorrow, but yeah hitting 100 wouldn't be a surprise.

Well 12z GFS shows what I was talking about. A big soaking Saturday into Saturday night to help with the drought, but it gets it out of the way for Sunday and would be fine for Sunday afternoon cookouts. Hopefully it'll work out that way.

I'm probably gonna hit 94 or 95 today which is a few degrees hotter than yesterday. Gonna have to go pretty far east for that advertised cooldown today with the backdoor front.

We desperately need the rain but I'd hate to see most of the holiday weekend ruined. I'm hoping for 2 out of the 3 days being not too bad. It's possible that Saturday ends up being the very rainy day with improvement for Sunday and Monday. It would still be cloudy and cool but hopefully dry enough for cooking outside. I wouldn't mind a soaking on Saturday but not too bad for Sunday and Monday, which some model runs have been showing. But of course there's still the risk of 2 out the 3 days being rainy -- a long way to go to figure it out. Anyway this is rough having this type of heat right now with it being so dry. The vegetable garden needs a lot of water.

Had a high temp of 91 degrees. It will definitely be a 4 day heat wave here.

I'm thinking my location will hit 97 or 98 on Tuesday.

Yep, as expected very little rain. I got only .03" here.

I see many of the models are now giving us less than a tenth on an inch tonight. I will water the vegetable garden today.

Yeah the overnight batch really overperformed. I ended up with 0.45" for the event. Not bad. Glad the garden got a good watering.

Yeah I had a very brief heavy downpour that dropped .05". Taking a look at radar now before I go to bed, I see a decent batch of rain is approaching. So maybe we can get a quarter to third of an inch out of this event afterall.

Even though it's a Saturday I'll gladly take it since we need the rain.

Yeah I got only .06" from that round of light rain. Not enough to give the vegetable garden a decent watering. I see the models are showing another round of rain during the overnight hours, so hopefully we'll get more then.

Only 54 degrees here with the gusty winds. Nasty for early May. Looking forward to mid 70s tomorrow.

Yeah a weak El Nino would give us a decent chance, but unfortunately the signs point to this one being strong. I'd much rather have a La Nina like the last couple winters than a strong El Nino.

As far as the cooler weather vegetables I planted Broccoli, lettuce and radishes in late March. All doing very well. I'll start picking lettuce in about a week. I've had to water a lot though with this terribly dry pattern. I got only .04" from today's showers so not happy about that.

I usually plant the warmer weather vegetables during the first few days of May. By then it's usually safe here, but I know you're way up in NW Jersey where you can still get frost in early May. You're wise to wait until at least mid May up there.

Freeze watch tomorrow night. Probably gonna get down to 31 or 30 here. Some people got fooled by the hot weather this week and planted tomato plants. Those people are going to be in trouble tomorrow night.