A powerful nor'easter is already producing its first visible effects along the East Coast, with roads flooding in several New Jersey shore communities late Friday night and thousands of residents across the region losing electric power. Water pushed into streets in Surf City, inundating some homes, while other Jersey Shore towns issued voluntary evacuation notices hours before officials warned that the worst flooding is still ahead.
The storm's arrival was visible well before dawn Friday. Surf broke hard along the rocky Massachusetts coast in Gloucester, where the twin lighthouses of Thatcher Island could be seen through the driving weather. Those early scenes of heavy seas were captured by Associated Press photographer Robert F. Bukaty during the first stages of the storm on Friday, Sept. 25.
Forecasters and local officials say tens of millions of people sit in the storm's path, a population already being hit by strong winds and steady rain. Rather than peaking and departing, the system is expected to intensify through the weekend, with the most consequential impacts — coastal flooding, power failures and dangerous surf — arriving Saturday and into Sunday.
The National Weather Service has flagged dangerous flooding along the Mid-Atlantic shoreline, with particular emphasis on coastal New Jersey and Delaware. That stretch of coastline is especially vulnerable because storms of this type push seawater onshore from the north and northeast, driving storm surge into bays, inlets and low-lying barrier-island and riverside neighborhoods at the same time heavy rain saturates the ground and overwhelms drainage systems.
In Surf City, a small borough on New Jersey's northern coast, water pooled in the streets with waves rippling across the surface of the flooding, pushing into residences along the water's edge. The images offered an early look at the kind of inundation officials have been warning about for days, and a preview of what neighbors farther south may face.
Roughly 34 miles up the coast, roads were also flooding in Manasquan, where Mayor Mike Mangan said residents should expect a prolonged period of standing water. A voluntary evacuation had already been issued earlier in the day for some low-lying portions of the community, a step officials typically take when they want residents — particularly those in flood-prone homes or vehicles — to leave early and on their own schedule.
Brian Kelly, mayor of the tiny beach community of Sea Bright, offered the most sobering forecast of the towns included in the early reports. He said the borough is bracing for wind gusts of up to 50 mph and water depths of as much as 6 feet on some streets, with flooding expected to begin Saturday and worsen by midday. He urged several hundred residents living in low-lying areas to seriously consider getting out ahead of the storm.
Kelly said Sea Bright is no stranger to coastal flooding, noting that the borough typically experiences one or two significant flooding events in a given year. But he said he believes this storm will be an outlier, closer in scale to the flooding produced by Hurricane Irene in 2011, which pummeled the Northeast and caused widespread damage across New Jersey and neighboring states. He stopped short of calling the storm a hurricane, but the comparison underscored how seriously local officials are taking the surge.
The disruption is already rippling well beyond the shoreline. Dozens of flights into Boston, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were canceled on Friday and Saturday, and several major concert events were called off as promoters and venues assessed the risk to outdoor crowds facing sustained wind and rain.
Airlines responded to the cancellations by waiving some change and cancellation fees on a range of East Coast flights through the weekend, a move designed to reduce the penalty for travelers whose itineraries are being disrupted by weather rather than by their own plans. Travelers on the coastal islands were among the most exposed to the fallout, since those airports serve communities with limited alternative ground transportation.
Meteorologists describe nor'easters as a recurring feature of the autumn season, distinguished by winds that rotate counterclockwise around a low-pressure center off the coast, driving cold, moisture-laden air northward against the land. The storms are notorious for prolonged onshore wind, which piles water against the coast for hours or days at a time and produces exactly the kind of chronic, street-level flooding described in Surf City, Manasquan and Sea Bright.
The focus now is on timing and preparation. With conditions expected to deteriorate through the weekend rather than ease quickly, officials are urging residents in flood-prone areas to move vehicles and valuables to higher ground, follow evacuation notices even when they are voluntary, and treat the Saturday morning period as the moment conditions are likely to be at their most dangerous.
(0)