Thunderstorms tonight, Dryness reaches Moderate Drought levels.

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Thunderstorms moving E through central NJ should begin to impact the area in the next 1-2 hours, although they will be diminished and likely just a chance for some rain, some heavy, and possible heavy wind gusts. Nothing to bad.

Thunderstorms and any rain move out late tonight and should give way to another dreary mostly cloudy day with some sun peaking through on and off tomorrow. There is a very slight chance of some pop up t-storms tomorrow, but for the most part those should stay well to the North of our coverage area.

Big topic for tonight is the DRYNESS! Man it is dry…and in fact so dry that we have shown up on the drought centers map as in a moderate drought

While we have had wet and dry periods, this dry period has been exceptionally dry! Yes, it is the extremes that make up the average – BUT – we are 6-8″ in deficit for rainfall since January 1st. Looking closely, this “dry” event has actually been around since 2013, and can even be traced back as far back as 2005.

Another way of looking at this is with mm/day of average precipitation rates. We are about -1.75 Standard deviations below the “average” for this time period.

The bottom line is, that this is not so good – the dryness. In a way, yes it is normal to get dry this time of year, but we have been dry for quite a while. A lack of snowpack this winter made the forests and top soil very dry. If you notice all the dust flying around, and pollen..then you can blame the dryness. This should continue for the next several weeks, and as long as we are in this current pattern. The good news is that last nights rain brought a VERY nice .5 to even 1″ of liquid – I know my lawn was very happy for it!

So…that is that for the “drought” update. Now for a bit of a dermatological update for the month:

We are currently +.571°F above the average for temperature. In terms of precipitation we are at 44% for the month having received only 1.86″ of the normal 4.25″. For the last 3 months, since April we have averaged +0.5°F, and we have received 8.13″ of rain, which is much less than the 12.77″ we usually get for the last 3 months. We are about a month behind and around 63% of normal. Since January we are at 16.65″ precip, below the normal 24.17″ we get by 7.52″.

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