First Days of November to Feature a Warmup for South Jersey

Mostly quiet weather will accompany increasing temperatures over the next few days, but another big cooldown is on the horizon.

Here are your weather headlines for Tuesday, November 1, 2016...

Increasing Temps, Humidity, Clouds

Mother Nature often treats New Jersey to a roller coaster of temperatures during the fall season. Successive cold fronts knock back temperatures, while bouts of south-southwesterly winds provide occasional tastes of warmth. This week follows that pattern nicely, as thermometers build to a crescendo through Thursday.

Thanks to the perfect combination of clear skies, light winds, and dry air, Tuesday morning's low temperatures are quite chilly - below freezing across interior New Jersey. Thermometers will recover nicely by Tuesday afternoon, with forecast highs in the upper 50s to lower 60s. That is seasonable (near-normal) for early November. Skies will start mostly sunny, with clouds rolling in as the day progresses. Most of the state will end up partly sunny, with some pockets of thicker clouds through the afternoon.

Tuesday night will be comfortably cool, and nowhere near as cold as Monday night/Tuesday morning. Lows will fall to the upper 40s - we should avoid a widespread frost or freeze.

Our warming trend continues on Wednesday, with highs jumping to nearly 70 degrees. Skies will again feature a mix of sunshine and cloud cover. The NAM model in particular has been stubborn about putting sprinkles and showers overhead from late Wednesday night to early Thursday morning as New Jersey gets tagged by a passing storm system. I'll mention it here, just in case. But chances and confidence are low enough to keep it out of my on-air forecast.

Thursday: Peak of the Warmth

Thursday will be the most active weather day of the week, as temperatures peak and an approaching cold front delivers our next chance for rain. Skies will become mostly cloudy, and winds will increase to the "windy" 15 to 25 mph range. Our latest forecast calls for high temperatures between 70 and 78 degrees across New Jersey on Thursday.

The aforementioned cold front will push showers and thunderstorms into New Jersey at some point Thursday afternoon. (There are slight timing differences among the forecast models, but precipitation onset averages between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.) We should see about a half-inch of fresh rainfall in the bucket by the time the rain moves off-shore Thursday night.

Another Big Cooldown

As usual, behind the storms will come a cold front. And behind the cold front will come a new, cooler air mass. The temperature difference between Thursday and Friday will be stark. While Thursday will come close to 80 degrees in South Jersey, some spots in NJ will struggle to make it to 50 degrees on Friday.

Friday will start windy, with residual clouds. Winds will calm and skies will clear quickly by midday.

We'll be left with cooler-than-normal temperatures for the weekend, in the mid 50s or so. Skies look to stay sunny and our weather should stay dry.