By Jennifer Kohlhepp, Staff Writer
Plumsted Township “dodged a bullet” when it came to Juno.
The National Weather Service had placed the Ocean County municipality under a blizzard warning and projected up to 2 feet of snow to cover the town by Tuesday. However, the predictions were wrong, with the storm traveling 90 miles east of where it was previously expected to hit, leaving Plumsted relatively unscathed with only three to four inches of snow, according to Community Development Director Dave Leutwyler.
“Everything seems to be in pretty good shape,” Mr. Leutwyler said from his township office just after noon on Tuesday. “The township building is open and plowing is about done.”
There were only two minor hiccups for the town but thanks to “a dedicated group of employees” they were handled calmly and without incident.
The employee parking lot had yet to be plowed when workers started to arrive in the morning.
“We kept having to make them move their vehicles,” he said.
He couldn’t say enough about the work crews who were out plowing roads and the police for keeping the township safe during the storm.
“Our guys do a great job. They were out plowing. And the same thing with our police, they are a dedicated group of employees. They even sleep in the station at times if they have to. I can say the same for all of the employees we have here.”
The other hiccup had to do with the police parking lot.
“No, there were no significant accidents or storm-related issues ,” he said. “The police did need their parking lot plowed again but it seems like we dodged a bullet here.”
In previous years, New Jersey had a salt shortage that affected towns’ during snowstorms like Juno but Mr. Leutwyler said that’s not the case this year.
“We have plenty of salt and we should have plenty for rest of the year as long as it doesn’t get too bad anyway,” he said.
Mr. Leutwyler was also happy to report that he not heard of any power outages in town during the storm.
