The Garden State will enjoy a few days of dry and warm weather, before the forecast turns unsettled for the weekend.

A beautiful beach day in Ship Bottom, N.J. (Dan Zarrow, Townsquare Media)
A beautiful beach day in Ship Bottom, N.J. (Dan Zarrow, Townsquare Media)
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Clear! Skies have cleared out thoroughly overnight, and that's setting up New Jersey for a couple days of pleasant, quiet, sunny, warm, and dry weather. Unfortunately, things will slip downhill again (read: wet) for the upcoming weekend.

I'm a bit surprised there are spotty areas of fog Wednesday morning as our atmosphere is fairly dry. Visibility has been as low as 3/4-mile so far, but such thick fog does not seem to be a widespread problem.

Meanwhile, morning temperatures have fallen into the 50s for much of the state. We'll climb into the seasonable, pleasant lower to mid 80s by Wednesday afternoon. Skies will be mostly sunny, weather will be dry, and winds will be remarkably light (except at the beaches). All around, a wonderful winner of a weather day.

(Note: The past two runs of the GFS forecast model have been dry (dew points in the 50s) and hot (temps near 90). I see no support for such conditions among the other models, so I'm kicking the GFS to the curb for the short term forecast.)

Wednesday night is looking good too, with comfortable low temperatures in the lower to mid 60s.

While I had been concerned about a shower and substantial cloud cover along the coast on Thursday morning, I'm now more confident this storm system will stay away from New Jersey. That will give us another pleasant day for Thursday, with partly sunny skies and high temps again in the lower to mid 80s.

Friday is going to be OK, even though our near-perfect weather conditions take a step downhill. Skies will becoming mostly cloudy, with a chance for a shower. The NAM shows a batch of morning showers, while the GFS includes afternoon showers. Who to believe? Eh, none of the above really make sense to me. It's just one of those situations where we'll have to see how the day plays out.

Then, along comes the weekend. As you know, I hold the 15 weekends from Memorial Day to Labor Day in very high regard. I don't care what happens during the week, as long as our summertime weekends are good. This weekend may be salvageable, but there will be raindrops along the way.

Unsettled is the best word to describe this weekend's weather forecast. Scattered showers and thunderstorms will accompany a mix of sun and clouds across the state on Saturday. While our weather will be occasionally wet, it will also be occasionally dry — a washout is not expected. In between the drops, it's going to be pretty warm on Saturday, with highs in the lower to mid 80s.

Sunday looks drier than Saturday, but a few showers and thunderstorms will probably remain. Sunday also looks even warmer than Saturday, with highs mostly between about 85 and 90 degrees.

The unsettled, very warm weather looks to continue for Monday too, with scattered showers and upper 80s/lower 90s in the forecast.

Dan Zarrow is Chief Meteorologist for Townsquare Media New Jersey. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter for the latest forecast and realtime weather updates.

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