New Jersey will experience beautiful spring weather for the next two days before the forecast becomes muddled with clouds and showers as April becomes May.

Here are your weather headlines for Tuesday, April 28, 2015...

Nice Spring Days

There were a few sprinkles and showers that popped up on radar late yesterday through early this morning, but it was a mostly dry day for New Jersey. In yesterday’s blog post, I mentioned the low-pressure system off the eastern coast of Canada... It’s still there, but slowly sliding out to sea. That means our rain chances are done, although we’ll still see the potential for some scattered clouds and a stiff breeze today.

Don’t let that get you down though... Both today and tomorrow will be very nice spring days. High temperatures across the state should end up in the 63° to 68° range today. And tomorrow, we’ll bump up that forecast to about 68° to 73°. As I mentioned, there will be a bit of a breeze - but that’s really been a regular occurrence recently. These are the days New Jersey springtime is made of... Enjoy!

A Tale of Two Models

By Thursday, we’ll start to see some changes in the weather, as we push pause on the beautiful spring days.

A storm system will be pushing off the Carolina coast on Thursday. Another impulse will ride out of the Ohio Valley Thursday through Friday. And that is about all we know for sure right now, as the forecast models continue to diverge in their solutions for New Jersey’s weather.

The GFS model continues to be the wet outlier. With that solution, we’d see a period of heavy, steady rain from Thursday evening through Friday morning and afternoon. Rainfall amounts would be in the neighborhood of 1 inch, centered on South Jersey.

The other models, including the NAM and Euro, are much drier. There are still some showers predicted, mainly on Friday morning. But rainfall totals would be in the neighborhood of less than 0.10" - a very different story from the steady rain mentioned above.

A depiction of Friday morning's precipitating forecast from two primary forecast models: the wetter GFS (left) and the drier NAM (right). (College of DuPage Meteorology)
A depiction of Friday morning's precipitating forecast from two primary forecast models: the wetter GFS (left) and the drier NAM (right). (College of DuPage Meteorology)
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So, what’s a meteorologist to do? I’m still liking the drier forecast. We’ll see some rain late in the workweek, but I do think some spots in New Jersey will end up staying dry. As a responsible forecaster, I do need to keep the possibility of rain alive for both Thursday and Friday, but you'll find that I'm not going to put much emphasis on it yet. So, for now, my forecast includes a “chance of showers” for both days. In addition, the introduction of clouds and possible showers will keep temperatures on the cool side for Thursday and especially Friday.

Overall, confidence surrounding this rain event forecast has increased a little bit since yesterday, as the "dry" forecast models have held steady to that solution. But I won’t be completely sold on the drier forecast until the GFS flips... stay tuned.

First Weekend of May

It doesn’t matter which scenario - wet or dry - verifies for Thursday and Friday... Models are quite consistent about the forecast for the upcoming weekend - and it's good news!

Some leftover clouds and even a shower is possible for Saturday morning, but skies should clear away to partly or mostly sunny by Saturday afternoon. Temperatures will recover to the 60° to 66° range on Saturday - right around or just below normal.

Sunday looks very nice at the moment, with mostly sunny skies and pleasant highs on either side of 70°. And the early forecast for Monday warms our temperatures into the mid to maybe upper 70s.

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