The Jersey Shore did not need a hurricane to face a crisis. September’s nor’easter put streets underwater, brought wind gusts up to 74 mph and tore away beach sand—all before the heart of our fall and winter storm season.
For much of the coast from Sea Bright to Cape May, Saturday morning brought the highest tide in at least a decade. Belmar was the exception. Tuckerton reached its second-highest recorded tide. Atlantic City reached its 12th-highest in a record dating to 1911.
I was in Highlands, one of our ShorelySafe communities, as major flooding covered streets with up to two feet of water. People had moved their cars to safer ground and listened to our warnings. Those steps mattered.
The wind was fierce, too. Surf City recorded a 74 mph gust. Island Beach State Park reached 70 mph. Neptune City received more than eight inches of rain.
This storm fell short of Sandy’s flooding in many places. Yet water levels matched or topped Winter Storm Jonas in parts of the Shore. Cape May was an exception, where Jonas remained higher.
The concern now reaches beyond flooded streets. Ten beaches had major erosion, according to my storm review. Waves cut steep sand cliffs and left beaches narrower.
That damage leaves less beach between the ocean and our communities as more storms approach. This was a hard lesson: a storm’s name does not tell us how dangerous it will be at the Shore.
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This storm’s danger came from a stalled weather pattern. Blocking high pressure over Canada and an upper-level low over the Mid-Atlantic slowed its escape. The pressure gradient between the northern high and coastal low supported persistent onshore winds. NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center highlighted this setup before the storm.
Those winds pushed Atlantic water toward New Jersey, producing storm surge above the predicted astronomical tide. Water levels were already elevated from earlier onshore flow. The storm then overlapped with higher tides around the full moon. Rutgers’ preliminary analysis counted 12 flooding high-tide cycles at Atlantic City and Cape May, and 10 at Sandy Hook.
For Shore communities, elevated coastal water also creates a drainage problem. High receiving-water levels can restrict stormwater outfalls. Rain then has fewer places to go, adding another flood mechanism to the tidal threat. This helps explain why rainfall can worsen coastal flooding without causing widespread inland flash flooding.
The storm’s eye-like clearing was consistent with a possible warm seclusion: warmer air becoming trapped near the low’s center. Such features occur in strong extratropical storms. Satellite appearance alone does not establish that a storm has become a hurricane.
