“Unwarmed by any sunset light
the gray day darkened into night,
a night made hoary with the swarm
and whirl-dance of the blinding
storm”
from “Snowbound” by John Greenleaf
Whittier
The early winter snowstorm that clobbered New Jersey recently could rank in the top 10 storms for the Shore area over the last century, the state climatologist said.
“This borders on an epic event in those areas that got close to 2 feet of snow,” David A. Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist at Rutgers University said Monday. “In terms of the southern half of New Jersey, it’s probably up there as one of the 10 largest storms — of the last half-century for sure.”
The counties most affected by the storm were Ocean, Atlantic, portions of Monmouth County, west to Camden and the Gloucester County area, he said.
“There was a little bit less in towns like Cape May and a lot less as you got farther north,” Robinson said. “High Point [Sussex County] got 3 inches. There were 9 to 12 inches in Central Jersey.”
Robinson said he was “pretty confident” that the most affected areas received 15 to 20 inches of snowfall.
“There might have been a few that cracked 20 to 25,” he said. “A 20-inch snowfall is quite rare in New Jersey.”
Snowfall records in New Jersey are often “hard to come by,” since people don’t record it or don’t know how to, Robinson said.
“They will go for the deepest location,” he said.
The best place to measure snowfall accurately is in an open field, Robinson said.
The storm was especially notable because ocean temperatures are usually warmer this early in the winter, Robinson said.
“You’ll get enough mild air coming in off the ocean that will turn it over to sleet or rain and hold down the accumulation,” he said.
That happened briefly along the coast from Cape May up to Atlantic City on Saturday, when the temperature rose above freezing.
“It turned over to a little rain,” he said. “But by the afternoon, the northern winds and cold air turned it back into snow. This was a rare one for the coast, given that it was the 19th of December.”
The early forecast models for the storm took it offshore, Robinson said. “And everyone stopped talking about it,” he said. “Come Thursday, the models brought it closer to shore and it became a front-page item.”
And the storm only worsened the coastal erosion situation, he said.
“Even if the storm hadn’t been that close, we were still getting a lot of wave action. It’s incredibly vulnerable. I’ve been telling people that for six weeks now.”
The El Nino pattern in the tropical Pacific may spell colder than average temperatures in the southern portion of New Jersey, Robinson said.
“It often brings storms to the southeastern United States, and these storms occasionally come up the East Coast,” he said.
It should remain cold for the next several days. There’s a chance of rain on Christmas Day, when the temperature will rise into the 40s, Robinson said.
“And we’ll do some melting,” he said.