El Niño and The Jersey Shore

February 7, 2010. It didn't take long for winter to return to the Jersey Shore. It was just a few weeks ago I could almost feel winter lose its grip on Sandy Hook Bay. There was a mild mid-winter thaw and a few days of near record warmth with highs in the 50s. Then just as if someone had turned on a switch. Wham! Winter is back.\

The Jersey Shore is covered in a blanket of snow and ice. A Saturday snowstorm engulfed the Jersey Shore with snow from Raritan Bay down to Delaware Bay. The snow began about an hour and half before midnight on Friday and didn't let up until roughly 15 hours later.

About 8 inches of snowfall is what I measured around Sandy Hook Bay. This is a far cry from the totals of 17 to 27 inches of snow throughout much of Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, and Ocean counties. In many cases it was record snowfall that came down two to three inches per hour. The storm immobilized most of southern New Jersey with blizzard conditions, brisk winds, and power outages for tens of thousands of residents. Moreover, northeast winds carrying gusts between 40 and 50 mph had brought about beach erosion and tidal flooding to quite a few coastal communities down south.

(Overlooking Sandy Hook Bay on the Henry Hudson Trail near Highlands)

Nearly the entire state was under some kind of winter storm advisory or warning last Friday night and Saturday. Yet, the southern Jersey shore got the worst of it. Unfortunately, this is a part of the state that is largely ill-equipped to deal with such larger-than-life winter snowstorms.

The weirdest part of this storm must have been its track. While much of New Jersey got plenty of snow, just across NY Harbor about 25 miles north, Manhattan hardly got any white stuff. It just shows how a few miles here or there can make a huge difference in receiving significant snow or just a trace. Usually the hardest hit by a snowstorm is northern New Jersey, but they got by without even a dusting.

Although it is never easy to categorize a winter season while it is still in the works, there is perhaps enough evidence gathered so far to classify this one as an El Nino winter. In the past few months, there has been plenty of extreme weather examples. Our little coastal region near Sandy Hook Bay has experienced record snowfall in December, arctic temperatures in early January, a near record high temperature in nearby Manhattan in late January, and a series of intense southern storms right through the autumn and winter so far.

Early last year, scientists at NOAA had predicted the consequences of an El Nino winter to the Mid-Atlantic region. It would include below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation. Thus far, that prediction has for the most part been right.

Fort the past few winters, we have been experiencing two La Nina's in a row. Now we are in the middle of a El Nino season. The name El Nino comes from the Spanish language and refers to the Christ Child. The reason is because when the phenomenon of an El Nino happens, it is normally around Christmas time. It takes place in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America. El Nino is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, as opposed to La Nina, which characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. These warm water conditions in turn affect weather worldwide for a year or more.

Some scientists believe that the increased intensity and frequency, now every two to three years, of El Niño and La Niña events in recent decades is due to warmer ocean temperatures resulting from global warming. In a 1998 report, scientists from NOAA explained that higher global temperatures might be increasing evaporation from land and adding moisture to the air, thus intensifying the storms and floods associated with El Niño.

Some scientists from NOAA also believe that El Nino may be functioning like a pressure release valve for the tropics. With global warming driving temperatures higher, ocean currents and weather systems might not be able to release all the extra heat getting pumped into the tropical seas, as such an El Niño occurs to help expel the excess heat.

What's more, NOAA scientists have determined that ocean waters have accumulated around 22 times as much heat and carbon as the atmosphere during the same time period. This heat, which is energy, is helping to drive the changes in the weather we are going through, such as heavier precipitation events from the south, bigger and more intense storm events, and bitter cold events as the atmosphere attempts to regulate the over-heating of the planet.

Although the weather of El Nino has really stirred things up in New Jersey this winter , we are not done yet. Last Tuesday, the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter and another snowstorm is forecast to batter New Jersey later in the week. At least February is the shortest month of the year.

[Author's note: After writing this article, a mid-week snowstorm pounded the Bayshore region of Monmouth County with about 14 inches of snow and about a quarter inch of ice. There were fallen branches and trees, plus widespread power outages. Some years, the shortest month of the year, does feel like the longest.]