A cold front will work its magic across New Jersey on Wednesday, ushering in cooler and drier air for the next couple of days.

Showers Cooler 20170614
loading...

Tuesday ended up being New Jersey's warmest day since last July and our warmest June day since 2012. Newark hit a record high of 99 degrees. Wow! Trenton and Atlantic City were a degree shy of their respective record high temperatures.

The heat wave has come to an end, thanks to a backdoor cold front that is working southward through New Jersey on Wednesday morning. As promised, it's still warm and sticky as of this writing, with most temperatures in the 70s. Meanwhile, the front is sparking some shower and light thunderstorm activity across northern and central Jersey. Any rain should taper off by around 10 a.m. at the latest.

As the day presses on, the entrance of cooler air and partly sunny skies will cancel each other out — temperatures will just go nowhere, ending up in the upper 70s to around 80 degrees by the afternoon. It will be much cooler along the Jersey Shore, closer to 70 degrees Wednesday afternoon.

As humidity levels decrease markedly through Wednesday evening, it will be become much more comfortable across the Garden State. Wednesday night's low temperatures will fall to around 60 degrees, in the neighborhood of 15 degrees cooler than the past few stuffy nights.

Even though temperatures will end up just below mid-June normals, I think Thursday will be a beautiful day. A pleasant mix of sun and clouds will accompany high temperatures in the lower to mid 70s.

By Friday, however, both clouds and humidity will be on the rise once again. Temperatures should hold steady in the 70s. In addition, I still have to put a chance for a shower or thunderstorm in Friday's forecast, although the spread, timing, and intensity of this rainfall is questionable. Models have progressively scaled back on the rainfall potential over the past few days, and I think it's clear we won't see an extended period of steady rain. The NAM model actually keeps us mostly dry, while the GFS is a wetter "scattered thunderstorms" solution.

It's going to be a warm front weekend, as temperatures rise to around 80 degrees on Saturday and further into the mid 80s on Sunday. Our weekend weather outlook isn't perfect though, as clouds will overtake sunshine and occasional showers are expected. Again, it doesn't look like steady rain & mash; there will be breaks in between the raindrops (especially on Sunday). You may have to temper or postpone your weekend plans accordingly.

The early look at early next week shows temperatures will remain at or above normal for the foreseeable future.

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

More From 94.3 The Point