Thursday NJ weather: Another beautiful, sunny, warm day

Get ready for the return of wet weather to the Garden State by the weekend.

Every summer, we only get a handful of truly beautiful days with blue skies, low humidity, light winds, and warm temperatures. Wednesday was one of those days. Thursday will be very similar to Wednesday, with two very minor exceptions: additional afternoon fair-weather clouds, and an on-shore wind that is about 2 mph stronger.

Thursday morning presents a pleasant start to the day, with temperatures mostly in the 50s (60s for urban corridors and along the coast). It will be a dry and warm Thursday, with mostly to partly sunny skies. High temperatures will range from the upper 70s along the Jersey Shore to the mid 80s further inland. Spectacularly seasonable.

We'll stay quiet Thursday night with comfortable conditions continuing. Overnight lows will fall into the lower to mid 60s, under partly cloudy skies.

Our transition to unsettled weather begins on Friday. Skies will become mostly cloudy, and there's a slight chance for a shower during the Friday daytime hours. Even so, it'll be a decent (albeit grey) day, with high temperatures in the lower 80s for most of the state.

The better chance of rain will arrive Friday night. And then the weekend will bring more wet weather to the Garden State.

How wet will it get? Great question. Our forecast models still don't have a definitive answer. I'll spell out two forecast scenarios for Saturday and Sunday.

Our best-case scenario for Saturday is the GFS model, which puts a stalled front over New Jersey throughout the weekend. That will keep scattered showers and thunderstorms over New Jersey throughout Saturday. "Scattered" means it will be occasionally wet — it also means we'll see occasional periods of dry weather too.

The worst-case scenario for Saturday? The NAM model, which now paints 1 to 4+ inches of steady, heavy rain across the Garden State all day. Yup, yet another total washout day is on the table now.

Scattered showers will be possible on Sunday, but it's far from a sure bet. If Saturday's front gets swept out to sea, we might end up with a mostly dry or even totally dry day on Sunday. (That would be fine by me!) We'll most like see a clearing trend late Sunday, maybe even with solid breaks of sunshine. That will warm up our atmosphere a bit, with forecast high temperatures around 85 to 90 degrees on Sunday.

So, bottom line for the weekend as it stands right now... Saturday will be the wetter day of the weekend, and Sunday will be the warmer day.

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