Prepare for Snowy Winter, ‘Not Blizzard After Blizzard’

SEA ISLE CITY – Dan Skeldon weathers the tribulations of a chief meteorologist for a local television station. He takes it on the chin from irate viewers when he misses a forecast call, yet he’s his own harshest critic. “When I get it wrong, I sulk,” he told the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce at its Nov. 15 meeting at Lobster Loft.
Skeldon, a familiar face on WMGM-TV40, Atlantic City, spoke in a windowed dining room that overlooked a waterway strewn with twisted floating docks and flotsam on the surface left in the wake of Hurricane (pardon me) Post Tropical Depression Sandy.
Regardless of its terminology, Skeldon noted the storm was “the worst case scenario” that could have happened. He never thought such an event would occur near Halloween. The storm struck Oct. 29.
Should anyone hope to win a “bar-room bet,” Skeldon said the last hurricane that officially made landfall in New Jersey was in 1903.
Skeldon’s field, he confessed, is an inexact science, yet one that, with better technology gave plenty of warning time for evacuation to be made from barrier islands before tides closed off causeways.
“I was hoping to be wrong with Hurricane Sandy,” he said, correcting himself that “it wasn’t a hurricane” when it lumbered up the coast. “It was 30 miles east of Cape May at 5 p.m. traveling west at 30 mph. Between 7 and 8 p.m., if fell apart in Atlantic City.”
While others declare Sandy went ashore at Atlantic City at 8 p.m., Skeldon sticks with his observation that it went ashore at 6 p.m. in Sea Isle City.
While some may point to global warming as a cause for Sandy’s intensity, Skeldon said the coast has been “overdue to a hurricane” having endured waves and wicked wind, tidal ebbs and flows through the decades from the 1940s and 1950s. He rattled off a string of those storms: Carol, Diane, Edna, Hazel, Irene, Gloria.
Hedging his bets, Skeldon predicted the coast remains “vulnerable” to a high-grade hurricane in the next five to 10 years. “Be on guard,” he urged.
“We build our homes on barrier islands. We live in a flood-prone area,” said the Ocean City resident. Whether or not you believe it, we are susceptible to hurricanes.” New Jersey’s slight indentation along the coast offers some respite from the trajectory of many storms. When they veer off into the Atlantic from North Carolina, quite often storm make a straight line toward New England or the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
“Our worst case scenario would be a storm that went up Delaware Bay,” said Skeldon.
Sounding like the prophet many take him to be, Skeldon opined, “It is not a matter of if, but when. We have to be prepared.” Again he repeated that Cape May County is the “sixth most difficult place to evacuate, especially in mid-summer.”
Part of the area’s saving grace with Sandy was that the population was lower, “just locals” as Skeldon noted.
There remains a bit of youngster in Skeldon. “I’m the first person to make a snowball and a snow man,” he smiled, as many in the room shuddered to think of layers of white causing more problems for the storm-stricken county.
“Hopefully, I can warn you and keep you prepared,” he said, and glanced out the window. “Today, I said it was going to be partly sunny,” he said as gray clouds hid that solar light. “We will get it wrong.”
Prognostication for the coming winter: “Colder and snowier, but not blizzard after blizzard.”