New Jersey is bracing for another winter storm over the next several days. The severity of the storm has yet to be determined. However, shore towns are expecting coastal flooding. Two towns — Brick and Toms River — have already issued voluntary evacuation orders. To get the latest update on the storm track, NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider spoke with Gary Szatkowski, Meteorologist-in-Charge at NOAA in Mt. Holly.
What’s clear so far, Szatkowski said, is that the storm system will bring a lot of wind and rain, and possibly a lot of snow. The lack of certainty about snow or rain has to with March temperatures, as spring tries to arrive.
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“If we get temperatures a couple degrees warmer, it’s just gonna be a kind of cold, wind-driven rain,” he said. “If we get temperatures down a couple degrees, we’ll start to see some higher snowfall amounts. It’s just a temperature difference of 2 or 3 degrees is what’s driving this discussion.”
Right now, Szatkowski said snow accumulations across the state will be around 2-6 inches, with higher amounts northwest of the the I-95 corridor and lesser amounts closer to the shore. “Again, a lot of that depends on the track of the storm and, if we get less rain and more snow, those numbers will probably go up,” Szatkowski said.
The Sandy-battered shore will be particularly vulnerable, with warnings of wind gusts up to 60 miles an hour, according to Szatkowski. He added that the threat of coastal flooding is high, ranging from minor to moderate. Szatkowski will be watching for the two high tides tomorrow.
“The high tide that we’re actually worried about the most is Thursday morning before sunrise around 3 a.m. or so, along the coast, and that could be where we see moderate to some locally major coastal flooding as the winds continue and the tides build.”