Weather
By Dan Skeldon
Everyone has a different definition of what constitutes South Jersey. Some say it begins at the Raritan River. Others say Toms River, or perhaps farther south still along the Mullica River. I heard one I really liked, that South Jersey ends where pork roll turns into Taylor Ham. But for me back in 2002, South Jersey was made up of Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland counties, the viewing audience of my new employer, NBC40.
Having just moved to South Jersey after four years in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I foolishly thought that my new forecasting territory, roughly from Bridgeton to Atlantic City from west to east and from Hammonton to Cape May from north to south, would be a “breeze” compared to where I was coming from. Up in New England, I forecasted for three states (Vermont, New Hampshire, and (Upstate) New York), not three counties. In those three states, and actually one Canadian province as well, were multiple mountain ranges and valleys, a wide range of topography, that spanned an area five times the size of my new “flat as a pancake” South Jersey forecasting home.
Over the next 15 years, I would repeatedly learn (and be humbled by) how wrong my initial notion of a less challenging South Jersey forecasting assignment really was. In fact, it took less than a year for me to realize the folly of my assumptions. Yet my education as to why weather forecasting is so often fickle, occasionally frustrating, and intricately complex continues even today, and likely will for the rest of my years.
Let’s start with that big body of water just to our east, the mighty Atlantic Ocean. On a basic level, it makes our summers cooler (near the shore) and winters milder and less harsh than those farther inland. But it fuels powerful hurricanes in the summer and major nor’easters in the winter, with the tricky rain/snow line often bisecting South Jersey, which yields tight snowfall gradients over just thirty miles. A 40-degree temperature difference or a 20-inch snowfall difference are both possible on any given day, thanks to the Atlantic.
But there’s also those two smaller bodies of water to our west, the adjacent Delaware Bay and the slightly more distant Chesapeake Bay. These appendages of the Atlantic can shift our winds and therefore our temperatures, cause thunderstorms both to fire up and to fizzle depending on the day, and in the winter, even produce “bay-effect” snow, albeit fairly rare.
Then there’s the shape of our coastline. If you look at a map, the South Jersey shore from Cape May to Brigantine curves inwards slightly, with a more concave shape. Meanwhile, it’s an outward or convex shape to the coastline to our north across Ocean and Monmouth counties. Believe it or not, that difference can play a role weather-wise by impacting both the structure and track of storms.
Next, there’s our soil, which is sandier than some of the harder and more dense, clay-based soils farther inland. That sandy Pine Barrens soil is a primary reason that some of us radiate so well on the coldest winter nights, with the coldest temperatures in the state (or even entire Mid-Atlantic) found right here in our backyard. Sandy soil also drains better as well, which is one reason we are less prone to inland flooding than other areas.
There are also the “microclimates” that can develop, based on the season, the big picture weather setup, and on location. Let me give you an example. During almost every summer, there are a handful of days, usually two or three, when a sea-breeze will set up on the Atlantic County beaches, but not on the Cape May County beaches. A sea-breeze is normally universal for every barrier island, but not on these days. When the winds come from a certain direction, specifically from the north-northwest (330 to 340 degrees) and blow at least 14mph, it sets up this rare exception. So on these days, I’d tell beachgoers to head south of 9th Street in Ocean City, which was always roughly and oddly the dividing line. And sure enough, Cape May County shore towns soared well into the 80s, while Absecon Island hovered in the much cooler 60s.
I’ve always found that the longer you live some place, the better a meteorologist and forecaster for that area you become. Furthermore, your education never stops. It is time and practice that allows someone to learn about all the little oddities and localized interactions that help determine the weather. While any meteorologist can give a forecast for any city on any day, experience matters. Having forecasted from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Finger Lakes of New York to the mountains of New England, a few years long stint at each place, I thought I had seen it all and knew it all. Then I moved to South Jersey, And Mother Nature reminded me that my schooling continues, even to this day.
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.
