Living in Coastal So. Jersey is starting to become a bit of a marathon as the climate change picks up.  In the last year we experienced a “new” weather phenomenon called a DERECHO ( an intense direct line heat driven wind storm) in late June that tore up the area like a huge tornado. Power in the county I’m in ( Atlantic) here in NJ was out for hundreds of thousands of people for days. Last summer (2011) we also had a direct hit by another land-falling Hurricane Arlen, but she spared our area, & instead dropped an enormous amount of rain on the northern part of the State and causing an intense flooding situation on the rivers and lakes.

This time around though it doesn’t look like we’re going to escape Hurricane Sandy’s wrath as she turns north and begins her trek along the east coast.   Unfortunately, her arrival off So. Jersey is going to coincide with two astronomical high tides and a full moon. That would be bad enough by itself , but at the same moment it moves north a storm front out of Canada is also making it’s way into the east coast and a high pressure zone is sitting over Newfoundland blocking the Storm from going west out into the Atlantic. All of this will cause the storm to slow and turn toward us.

Where I live in the Atlantic City area the present models show a direct hit by this storm on Mon. morning. Tomorrow mid-day I’m evacuating from my home on Absecon Island to a family members home offshore in a surrounding community.  A 4-8 ft. storm surge is predicted for Absecon Island and although my home is in the middle of the Island at 15 ft. above sea level my wife wants to bail, so bail we shall along with our son and our cat “Secret.”  This would be the first time I have ever evacuated Absecon Island in a storm in my 60+ yrs. of living here.

Many are staying. Last time I stayed. This time the situation is far more serious, or at least it looks like it will be far more serious. Last time when we stayed it got ugly for a few hrs. This time the prediction is 24 to 36 hrs. of tropical storm force winds along the coast. Whatever isn’t sturdy real sturdy is going to be taken apart  by such an event. Add to the wind for that many hrs. an 8 ft. storm surge on top of a full moon high tide and the picture gets even darker.  The storm is over a thousand miles away right now and were already feeling it’s outer bands of wind. This isn’t going to get better till Thurs. you do the math.