You’ve been there. You check your phone, see a sun icon for 2:00 PM, and walk out the door without an umbrella. Ten minutes later, you’re standing in a Jersey downpour, wondering if your phone is gaslighting you. Honestly, it’s not just you. New Jersey is one of the most difficult states to pin down for an accurate hour-by-hour forecast because of how we’re sandwiched between the ocean and the mountains.
Right now, as of Sunday morning, January 18, 2026, the weather in NJ hourly is basically a battleground. We are sitting at 31°F with a "feels like" of 27°F. There is a light to moderate snow falling across much of the state, and the humidity is maxed out at 95%. If you’re looking at the radar, you’ll see a southeast wind at about 5 mph pushing moisture right into our laps.
The Science of the "Jersey Squeeze"
Why does the hour-by-hour change so fast here? It’s what I call the Jersey Squeeze. You have the Appalachian ridges to the northwest and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. These two features create microclimates that drive automated weather models crazy.
A model might predict snow for New Brunswick at 10:00 AM, but if the "Appalachian damming" effect holds cold air against the mountains longer than expected, that snow stays as ice. Or, if the ocean breeze kicks in a few miles further inland, your "snowy" afternoon turns into a sloppy, 38-degree rain shower.
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What’s Happening Today: Sunday, Jan 18
If you’re planning your day, don't just look at the daily high. Today’s high is 35°F, but we won't hit that until the afternoon. The low tonight drops to 22°F.
- Morning: The chance of snow is high (71%) through the daylight hours.
- Afternoon: Expect the wind to shift. It’s coming from the North at 7 mph later today, which will start to pull in drier air.
- Tonight: Things clear out significantly. The precipitation chance drops to 40% and eventually hits near zero as we go into Monday.
Most people make the mistake of seeing "70% chance of snow" and assuming it will snow 70% of the time. That’s not what it means. It means there is a 70% confidence that at least a measurable amount of snow will fall somewhere in the forecast area. When you're looking at an hourly breakdown, look for the "intensity" markers, not just the percentage.
Why Your App Fails the Hourly Test
Most weather apps are just "pass-throughs." They take raw data from the GFS (Global Forecast System) or the European model and spit it out onto your screen without a human ever looking at it.
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The GFS model only updates every six hours. If a storm speeds up—which they often do when hitting the Jersey coast—your app is literally six hours behind reality. Meteorologists like Dan Zarrow or the team at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly are constantly "hand-tuning" these forecasts. They know that when the wind hits the Raritan Bay a certain way, the hourly timing needs to be moved up.
The 2026 Forecast Reality
We are currently in a weak La Niña cycle. Traditionally, this means a "warmer and drier" winter for the Northeast, but 2026 is proving to be a bit of an outlier. We've seen massive temperature swings—one week it's 55 degrees in Cape May, and the next, the Polar Vortex buckles and sends us into a deep freeze.
These "repeated shots of cold air," as AccuWeather’s Paul Pastelok recently noted, make the hourly transition from rain to snow incredibly tight. A single degree of difference in the "boundary layer" (the air closest to the ground) determines if your driveway needs a shovel or a drain.
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How to Read the Radar Like a Pro
Stop looking at the colorful blobs and start looking at the velocity.
- Green and Blue: On most radars, this is moisture moving toward the radar site.
- Red and Orange: This is moisture moving away.
- The "Bright Band": If you see a very bright, thin line on the radar, that's often where snow is melting into rain. If that line is moving toward you, your hourly snow forecast is about to turn into a rain forecast.
Survival Steps for NJ Weather
If you actually want to know the weather in NJ hourly without getting soaked, follow these rules:
- Ignore the "Daily Icon": The little sun/cloud icon on the top of your app is a weighted average. It’s useless. Scroll down to the actual graph.
- Check the Dew Point: If the temperature is 34°F but the dew point is 20°F, that rain will likely turn to snow as it falls through the dry air (a process called evaporative cooling).
- Watch the "Winds Shift": In New Jersey, a wind shift from Southeast to Northwest is the universal signal that the "messy" part of a storm is ending and the "cold" part is beginning.
Moving forward, the best thing you can do is bookmark the NWS "Area Forecast Discussion." It's written by actual humans in Mount Holly or Upton. They’ll tell you why they think the snow will start at 2:00 PM instead of noon, and they’ll admit when they’re uncertain. That honesty is worth way more than a static icon on your iPhone.