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A fast-moving wildfire is burning through Ocean and Lacey Townships in Ocean County, New Jersey, destroying thousands of acres and forcing evacuations and widespread road closures. According to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, the Jones Road Wildfire has scorched 3,200 acres and is just 5% contained as of Tuesday evening.
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And breaking right now, a line of flames seen in Ocean County, New Jersey, as a wildfire rages
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destroying thousands of acres, forcing people from their homes and causing power outages
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Good evening and thanks for joining us. I'm Natasha Burma. Steve has the night off
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Here's the latest that we know at this hour as we take another look at those intense flames from
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the Jones Road wildfire currently burning in Ocean and Lacey Townships about 80 miles south
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of New York City. According to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, 3,200 acres are burning
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It's currently 5% contained. People have been evacuated from their homes, and shelters have been set up at high schools in Manahawken and Manchester Township
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Meanwhile, Jersey Central Power and Light is reporting thousands of customers are without power
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There are also multiple road closures, including the Garden State Parkway between Barnegat and Lacey Roads
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Still unclear what caused the fire, which officials say started as a brush fire first reported this morning
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All right, let's take a look at how the weather is affecting the firefight tonight with Chief
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Meteorologist Nick Gregory. Hi, Nick. Hi, Natasha. We've got a couple of things going on. First
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of course, when we deal with wildfires, what kind of the wind situation has been happening out there
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And it been a southwest wind shifting more to the west now It hasn been all that high in speed It averaging anywhere from about 8 to about 13 15 miles per hour So occasionally some of those gusts are getting a little higher
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We had a gust of 2025 earlier down below the Belmar area, but that seems to have gone away
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So that's the first ingredient. The other ingredient is how dry are things. And now the humidity levels have come up a little bit, but we're still pretty dry
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I mean, look around town here, humidity at the 28% mark, a little bit higher as you get on Long Island
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But earlier in the afternoon when these fires got going, the humidity was down around 20, 25 percent
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So very, very dry air, combination of a bit of a wind. And the result is, again, the embers can spread pretty quickly
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And it's still pretty mild out there. We're in the 60s to about 70 as you go from the city on southward into New Jersey
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And there is no rain coming. So it's a dry forecast. You can see here our futurecast is just showing clouds in the entire area
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There's an area of rain off to the south down and towards the Carolinas. But that is not coming our way
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So any help from any rainfall to work on those wildfires is not going to be happening
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You look at the future cast, sky goes mainly clear tonight and it stays clear tomorrow
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Sunny day, not quite as warm. We're talking about low and middle 60s or 70s for tomorrow
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So hopefully, again, these dry conditions won't be too bad as we move on into tomorrow's forecast
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Natasha? Yeah, hopefully. All right, Nick, thank you
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