Union & Somerset Counties Weather Page

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Welcome all. I created this site because I have had a lifelong fascination with the weather. I am not a forecaster, nor a wishcaster. The main purpose of this page is to report weather conditions at my location in North Plainfield, NJ and to provide a list of links to Plainfield-area weather, as well as Somerset and Union County weather information.

During significant weather events, I will report on conditions and include photos as often as is possible. Of course, this will only happen if this is occuring on weeknights, weekends or on days off from work. My posts are listed with the most recent first. I have also set up a message board so that everyone can report weather conditions in the northeast and carry on discussions. I have an Oregon Scientific WM918 weather station and will provide actual condition data as well as visual observations.

Thank you for taking the time to check out this page. I hope you will bookmark it and post messages from time-to-time -- particularly during severe weather.

Weather Conditions and Observations

Tuesday, March 16, 2004; 5:15 PM
I'll keep this short and sweet:

snow depth on grassy area: 5.5"
snow depth on pavement: 3.2"
snow depth on patio table: 5"
Temperature: 32F
Barometer: 29.77" and falling

Wednesday, January 28, 2004; 12:40 AM
FYI - My weather station is still not completely set up. I can only get indoor readings, and the outside temperature and humidity (I temporarily hung the hydrometer out the window). Here are my readings for the current storm so far:

Tues. night, Jan. 27 --

6:00-9:00 PM -- .5" snow, started as an intermittant mix of sleet and flurries, light snow for the second half of that time period
9:00-10:00 PM -- additional 1.25", moderate snow
10:00-11:00 PM -- additional .25", for the first 45 mins. we were in a small dry slot that opened up, but the snow has picked up again at a moderate to heavy pace. Temperature 22.5F.
11:00 PM-12:00 midnight -- additional 1.5", moderate to heavy. Temperature 22F.

I'm using two pieces of corrugated cardboard in different locations as my 'snow boards' and I dump the snow off after each measurement. This is supposed to give a true accumulation reading without any compacting. Taking measurements this way, I have a total of 3.5". However, when I stuck the ruler in several spots in the total accumulated snow, I got an average reading of 4.5". I'm inclined to believe that second number because on the 11:00 PM news, totals in my surrounding areas were reported as 4".

Wednesday, December 17, 2003; 11:45 PM
Special Note: I've been meaning to post this since Dec. 7 and just haven't had a chance. The official two-day total at Newark for the Dec. 5-6 storm was 16.5". I couldn't find an exact measurement for North Plainfield or even Plainfield. I did see a NOAA map of NJ with snowfall amounts posted on it in big letters and no cities were marked. It looks like my area fell somewhere between the numbers 14" and 16" on the map, so I must not have taken very good measurements. I thought the ruler went all the way to the ground, but maybe I was mistaken. Also, there must have been some compaction by the time I took my measurements.

Regarding the storm we had this past Sunday, Dec. 14, I didn't take any measurements, but I estimate we got at least 5". My husband had to work that day, and when he got home that evening he intended to start up the snowblower, but I told him not to bother because it would all be melted by the morning. It was already raining. Well, I wasn't exactly right, but a lot of the snow did melt by morning, and what was left was mostly slush.

Saturday, December 6, 2003; 10:00 PM
Note: I have changed the name and logo of this page and added some links for Somerset County. I still need to add more Somerset links and check the Union and NJ links because some may be outdated.

At 3:30 PM I attempted to measure the snowfall around my house. It was difficult due to drifting. I measured many spots and got different readings from 8" to as high as 12". Most of the readings were near the lower end of those numbers, and I will guess that the official reading will be 9.5". Here are some photos and short video I took. The first two photos and the video were taken at 11:20 AM at the height of the storm. The three other photos were taken at 3:45 PM and there was no snow falling at that time. Currently, light snow is falling.

Click Here to view an AVI video of storm.
Note: make sure you allow this file type to be opened in Windows Media player or you won't be able to view it. After clicking on Media in my Explorer toolbar, I had to click on Options and then Reset my file types to make it work.

Friday, December 5, 2003; 11:45 PM
Important Notice! You may have noticed that in the top paragraph I changed it to read that I will be reporting conditions in North Plainfield, NJ. I moved here in mid-October, so now I am in the Eastern-most portion of Somerset county (and close to being in the Northern-most portion as well). Plainfield and Scotch Plains, which are right next door, are in the Western-most part of Union County so I am still very close to Union County. Therefore, I am going to be adding links for Somerset County weather, I am going to leave the Union links, and the page will be renamed the Union/Somerset County Weather Page. Since I will be snow-bound tomorrow, I hope to do some work on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, I will report that I have not yet had a chance to put up my weather station at this new location, so unfortunately, I won't be able to report actual data during this storm. However, I did measure the snow depth, and as of this writing, it is 6.5" (I could have sworn it was more, especially during my drive home from work). I will be taking pictures and posting them here tomorrow during the second part of this storm, so please check back.

Friday, March 21, 2003; 11:45 PM
Wow! At 5:25 PM today, a small, intense thunderstorm made it's way through Western Union County. I was at my office in Berkeley Heights where the ground became covered with marble-sized hail. Living most of my life in NYC and rarely getting hail there, the largest hail I've seen prior to this was pea-sized. As I left my office and the clouds began to clear revealing the little bit of daylight that was left, the melting and evaporation of the hail caused an eerie ground mist similar to a dried ice smoke effect. Most of it came from the stands of trees and grassy areas where the hail hadn't melted yet. This was very spotty. I would drive through a thick mist with a visibility of maybe 10 feet, with a sharp cut off into a completely clear spot. As I arrived home in Union, the ground was already wet and another small piece of the storm system began moving through with some thunder and lightning, but no hail was to be seen.

My rain gauge measured a total of .59 inches for the 24 hour period of March 21. For the 24 hour period of March 20, it registered 1.18 inches.

Below is a screen capture of a weather.com radar map from 5:25 PM today. Look in the dead center of the storm that is SW of Newark at the very dark maroon color and that's where I was! :)

Saturday, March 1, 2003; 5:45 PM
Below are some photos from February 18, 2003, the day after the blizzard. FYI -- At the end of the storm I tried to take another snow depth measurement, but there was so much drifting that I couldn't get an accurate reading. Newark officially had 22.3" for the 2-day event. From the estimated average readings I was able to get, Union had at least that amount, but I'm willing to bet it was closer to 24". Most streets in Union had been plowed by late afternoon on the 18th, but there was still some snow in the middle of the side streets due to idiots who dug out their cars and driveways and threw the snow in the street. Yes there wasn't much room left in front yards or on the edges of the sidewalks to pile the snow, but it was do-able. You just had to make the piles higher!

You can see how high the piles are in these photos and how much snow was still piled around the cars. In the second photo you can see a car that is still buried except for a tiny bit of the roof that was cleared off so the plow drivers could see it. It is on the far left of the photo. In the photo of my backyard, you can see the snow is up to the top of the picnic table bench. This is after a day of slight melting and the snow becoming compressed from it's original height. The yard is on an upward slope and in the middle of the photo you should see several cement steps, but they are completely buried. These photos were taken around 5:30 PM at twilight so that's why they have a blue cast.

Monday, February 17, 2003; 11:00 AM
Current readings: Temp. 21.6 F / Humidity 82% / Barometer 30.09 inches and falling / winds N 4mph with occasional gusts as high as 10.5mph. The winds have been nothing close to the reading at Newark. As of 9:30 AM we had 15" of snow on the ground. Without going outside, looking at a spot I had cleared off, I estimate we now have 18". These photos were taken at 9:15 AM. They were taken on my Street, and from a view while standing on the corner in the middle of the street and looking down the cross street. You can see a dog playing in the snow in the sidewalk shot. The city plows have not come through since last night. Just after I took these photos, a neighbor with a plow went up the block a couple of times.

Monday, February 17, 2003; 1:00 AM
Snow Depth: 4.25" / Temp. 12.9F (temp did go down to 11F since last reading, but went back up) / Barometer 30.36 inches and falling / winds N/NW 3.6 mph.

Sunday, February 16, 2003; 6:20 PM
As a significant snow event gets underway, I'm finally posting some photos from the Christmas Day storm. But first -- as of 5:30 PM light snow began to fall and it is sticking immediately to all surfaces. The temperature is 12.9F, the barometer is 30.53 and steady, winds are NW and steady at 2.7 mph, and currently I'm not getting a dewpoint or humidity reading. I noticed that when the temperature gets into the low teens, these readings are out-of-range on my particular station. The photos below are from the Dec. 25, 2002 storm and shot in Basking Ridge, NJ. The first photo was taken at 4:00 PM and the rest were shot at 5:40 PM.

Sunday, February 2, 2003; 10:30 PM
This isn't a condition report -- just some info. The Christmas Day storm brought 5" of snow to Union . I have some great photos I took during the storm that night while in Basking Ridge. There was about 6" of snow there. I will post them if I ever get around to it.

Click here for Archive of condition reports

Another chance to go to the links page!

Zcounter.com
Unbelieveable! How hard is it to find a free counter that doesn't go out of business in two months? My counter was wiped out, so I restarted it as of 10/15/02. However, Zcounter was purchased by another company and I've had to reset the counter AGAIN as of 2/2/03.