Severe Storms Wallop Central Jersey
Photos of the intense thunderstorm that slammed Greg’s Weather Center in South Plainfield and several communities across three counties in Central Jersey on July 3rd.
Area Hammered by Hurricane-Force Winds, Hail, and Heavy Rains
SOUTH PLAINFIELD, NJ – As residents around Central Jersey prepared to gather with family and friends for the Fourth of July Holiday Weekend, Mother Nature had some fireworks of her own on display late Thursday afternoon and evening. Severe storms walloped Central Jersey with a combination of hurricane-force winds, pea-to-marble-sized hail, and heavy rains.
As a result, numerous downed power lines, tree branches and limbs, and uprooted trees came down in communities across Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex, and Union counties. While Greg’s Weather Center in South Plainfield, NJ, emerged relatively unscathed, nearby neighborhoods in town, as well as North Plainfield, Plainfield, Scotch Plains, and North Edison, suffered significant damage.
GWC toured a good portion of South Plainfield during the morning and early afternoon of July 4th and found a good deal of damage around town. Meanwhile, reports of widespread damage came in from North Plainfield and Plainfield. The powerful storm uprooted large trees, and some fell on top of homes. Utility poles snapped in half. Fierce winds scattered tree branches and limbs of all shapes and sizes across lawns and streets. The devastating storms also cost the lives of several people.
One person died while driving on Greenbrook Road in North Plainfield. The individual had pulled over to the side of the road to wait for the vicious maelstrom to subside when a tree came crashing down on the vehicle. Nearby in Plainfield, another tree fell on top of another vehicle with two people inside and killing them. Survivors had to endure the inconvenience of power outages.
According to New Jersey Governor Bill Murphy, approximately 40,000 residents across the storm-affected area were without power. In addition, the downed trees and power lines forced many road closures. In South Plainfield, traffic on Sampton Avenue needed to be detoured due to a large tree brought down by damaging winds between Martin and Orchard Drives. The tree managed to take down power lines with it as well.
Near the South Plainfield Middle School on Plainfield Avenue, there were several large trees and limbs down in the front. In addition, the traffic light at the corner of Geary Drive and Plainfield Avenue was out. On the side of the Middle School next to its parking lot, a large tree came down on top of a bike rack.
The wicked storm uprooted many trees in Spring Lake Park. In addition, it scattered many large tree limbs like debris. Emerging from the park onto Maple Avenue, residents encountered the road closed in front of the PAL Building thanks to downed wires. Traffic was detoured. Many tree limbs were down along Avon Avenue and West Crescent Parkway adjacent to Frank Jost Field.
Another area that was hit quite hard by the storm was Whispering Hills Lane. The road was closed to traffic due to a downed power line from a utility pole that nearly cracked in half. Numerous tree limbs lined the properties down the street. The storm resulted from another hot and humid day in Northwestern Middlesex County and the rest of the Garden State.
The high temperature at Greg’s Weather Center on Thursday was exactly 90 degrees after a morning low of 64. It was the eighth day of at least 90° temperatures at GWC in 2025. All eight days have come since June 19th, including a three-day heatwave that peaked with the first 100-degree day since July 2012 on June 24th.
Couple the heat with dew points in the upper 60s to low 70s, the ingredients were there for severe thunderstorms. The Storm Prediction Center had already indicated a day earlier that there was a slight risk for severe weather on Thursday. Showers and storms began to develop across Eastern Pennsylvania and Northwestern New Jersey during the mid-afternoon hours.
Radar out of Fort Dix depicted a significant thunderstorm cell blossoming in the eastern portion of Hunterdon County near the Somerset County border. This would be the storm that would go on a march through several communities across three Central Jersey counties. The downburst produced winds over 80 miles per hour along with pea to marble-sized hail and heavy rainfall. The intense storm produced damage in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Middlesex, Dunellen, North Plainfield, South Plainfield, Plainfield, Scotch Plains, and North Edison.
The storm first emerged as an impressive shelf cloud to the northwest of GWC just before 6:00 PM. There wasn’t much in the way of lightning and thunder associated with the shelf cloud marking the storm’s leading edge. As the shelf cloud drew closer to GWC, the winds began to pick up, and then the rain began. The intensity of the wind and rain picked up rapidly as the storm barreled through.
The peak rainfall rate during the storm was 8.00 inches per hour at 6:03 PM. The first ten or so minutes of the storm consisted of damaging winds and heavy rain. Then, hail began to come down as well. The thunder and lightning came in after much of the high wind, heavy rain, and hail had moved out. Total rainfall from the storm at GWC was an inch and a quarter.
In terms of intensity, the severe thunderstorms on July 3rd rivaled the Labor Day Storm of 1998, the Derecho of June 1993, and the derechos of November 1989. Another powerful thunderstorm from mid-September 2021 showed similarities to this storm. The severe weather temporarily helped usher in relatively cooler and drier air. However, things heated back up into the 90s by the end of the holiday weekend.