Weather
By Dan Skeldon
Three decades is certainly a long time. But for those that lived on our barrier islands back in the early 1990’s, it’s not long enough to entirely erase the memories of a historic early season storm, 30 years ago this week!
One of the strongest Nor’easters on record, and certainly the strongest December coastal storm ever, left an indelible mark on the Jersey shore in early December 1992. The powerful early season Nor’easter struck New Jersey on December 10-12, 1992, unleashing a multi-faceted fury from Cape May to Sandy Hook, with the immediate coast bearing the brunt of the storm’s wrath.
Like every coastal storm, it produced heavy rain and snow. For South Jersey, it was a milder storm and the former, not the latter, as the storm track kept the snow well to our north and west, with parts of western Maryland and western Massachusetts receiving up to four feet of snow. Sussex County, in the far northwestern reaches of the Garden State, saw over a foot of snow. But for our corner of New Jersey, this storm was not about the snow or even the windswept rain, but the unrelenting wind, waves, and flooding that battered the barrier islands for several days.
Hurricane-force wind gusts were recorded up and down the coast, with an 80 mile-per-hour wind gust in Cape May and an 89 mile-per-hour gust in Sandy Hook. For the record, hurricane force gusts start at 74 mph. It’s yet another case that supports the assertion from meteorologists that while nor’easters don’t get an official name or the media coverage of hurricanes, they can be just as powerful and impactful. Those powerful winds blew out windows at boardwalk businesses and caused structural damage up and down the shore.
Of course, another byproduct of those hurricane-force wind gusts were large and battering waves, which towered up to 20 to 25 feet high off the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts. The large waves relentlessly pounded area beaches and caused a massive loss of sand from beach erosion. The cost to replace the sand lost from the storm reportedly reached up to 300 million dollars.
But perhaps the most significant and most widespread impact from the December ‘92 Nor’easter was the coastal flooding. The multi-day storm caused strong and long-lasting onshore winds, from the east and northeast and eventually the north. Those winds trapped water in our back bays for consecutive high tide cycles, and prompted several rounds of moderate and even major tidal flooding. In fact, the 9.3 feet tide height above mean low water in Atlantic City that resulted from the worst high tide of the ‘92 storm still remains the highest water level ever recorded there, ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s 8.9 feet above mean low water in October of 2012. So the December storm remains the benchmark storm in terms of highest tide heights on record, at least for some locales along the shore.
Along its path, the powerful coastal storm resulted in at least 9 deaths and two billion dollars worth of damage throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
1962…1992…2022? Let’s just hope that generational nor’easters don’t strike every 30 years. Let’s remember earlier this year, we marked the 60-year anniversary of the March of 1962 Nor’easter, or the Ash Wednesday or “Five-High” storm as it is sometimes known, the strongest March storm on record. Couple that with the 30-year anniversary of the December of 1992 storm, and history would say we’re due. Of course, I’d like to think it’s just a coincidence, and I’m 100% confident that these historical storms are random and don’t strike at fixed intervals. After all, the “Perfect Storm” struck just 14 months before the December ‘92 storm, back around Halloween in 1991. Truth be told, these epic storms can strike in back-to-back years, or there can sometimes be a decades-long gap in between them. Only Mother Nature knows when we’re next in line.
As coastal residents, we can use these anniversaries to remain humble and educated when it comes to the destructive power that Nor’easters can unleash. And there’s no such thing as too much preparation, at any time of the year.
Aside: If you read last week’s column, I discussed a very “favorable” pattern for an East Coast storm or two the second half of December, from December 15-31. That idea still stands, and while it doesn’t guarantee a major storm, it does indicate the “potential” for some mischief around the holidays. Again, only time will tell.
Meteorologist Dan Skeldon has a degree in meteorology from Cornell University. He has forecasted the weather in South Jersey for the last 18 years, first on the former television station NBC40 and then on Longport Media radio. Dan has earned the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval for Broadcast Meteorologists, and now does television broadcasts on WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
