A visual chronicle of suburban NJ
DOUBLE RAINBOW! (Do you remember that video meme? I do. This parenthetical phrase is a hyperlink to it.)
Taken after a heavy thunderstorm last week. It was rainbowing for a solid 10 minutes, right at dusk! So pretty! And finally, finally, finally, I put my polarizing filter to good use!! #nerd
Hi!
I’m not exactly out of retirement, but the summer sky over New Jersey has been doing some interesting things this week, and I’m sharing.
I caught my first lightning strike last night! I’m very excited!
And I caught a second bolt, too! Whoaaaa.
That’s it. I’m done. I can sell my camera now.
(That’s a joke.) (But “photograph lightning” has been on my bucket list for a few years. Now I just need some star trails and I’ll REALLY be all set.)
So apparently there’s some giant blizzard headed towards the northeast. (Weather Channel is calling it “Nemo.”)
New England is supposed to get the brunt of it, from what I can tell, but the New York/ north Jersey area is supposed to get 6-12 inches, and everyone is panicking. (Last night, after 9PM, I waited in line to get gas for about 15 minutes. [No gas crisis, but normally at that time of night, I’d roll right up to a pump, wham bam thank you ma’am.])
Being a seasoned northeasterner who lived through Sandy and doesn’t drive much, I’ve been sort of rolling my eyes about all the hubbub. Pshaw, we’re tough, we can handle a foot of snow!
…..but I should probably make sure all my electronics are charged anyway. Just in case.
I’ll keep you guys updated if anything interesting happens. (and assuming I have power!)
(By the way, this lady is the cousin of this kid, who lives behind the Library of the Chathams, and she was photographed over two years ago, so no, Nemo hasn’t saddled us with that much snow YET.)
Ha, more snow tonight. Not much yet, which is good for those of us who drive. (Not so good for those of us who build snowmen.)
After Friday’s little snowfall, there’s supposed to be a “wintry mix” of some sort tomorrow. Which is, of course, going to make getting around into a big mess.
But y’know what? I’m just happy that the weather’s finally above 22°F (-5.5 C), which is where the temperature has sat for the past week. For New Jerseyans, that’s pretty darn cold.
I keep reminding myself that it’s still not cold enough to freeze nostril hairs, which was a thing we had to deal with in Chicago. And if I can get through that, then 22 degrees is nothing.
…”wintry mix,” on the other hand, I dunno.
It’s snowing!
Apparently it counts as a snowstorm, so the Weather Channel is calling this one “Freyr.”
I think things are finally getting plowed around here, which is nice.
(Well okay frogs are cool too.)
But anyway, there was some lovely fog covering everything this morning.
So how did you fare through this storm?!
All of the photos in this post were taken near/around my parents’ neighborhood in Ocean Township (Monmouth County, NJ), where I’m staying. Their development is more or less near the top of a hill, so flooding isn’t a huge problem in this immediate area. Trees, on the other hand…
We just got our electricity back. Thank goodness for underground wires! My family was lucky: we only went ~42 hours without power, and we have no major structural damage to the house.
I haven’t been to my own apartment in New Providence since Hurricane Sandy started. But because it has overhead wires, and because it was out of power for ~6 days after Snowtober, I can’t imagine it’ll regain power before next week. (There go all my frozen veggie burgers.)
When the electricity went, our phone line— Verizon Fios, fiber optic— ran out of battery after a few hours, and we were without phone, too.
“No problem,” we shrugged, “we still have cell phones.”
NOPE. Twenty-five percent of AT&T cell towers were down, and calls weren’t going through… but we eventually discovered that we could send texts. (So I showed my parents how to text.)
If you can read this, you have internet access, so you can see photos of what’s left of the shore towns. I’m just looking at these photos for the first time, and crying, “I just jogged down the Belmar boardwalk last week!” (The Belmar boardwalk is gone.)
Here’s what the Belmar boardwalk USED to look like:
All these names that keep popping up in the news are my hometown stomping grounds: Asbury Park, Long Branch, Belmar… it’s really weird to hear these town names on national channels. And they’re… destroyed?
I want to go look at the beach for myself, but (a) apparently several towns aren’t allowing people east of the NJTransit train tracks (which are about 1-2 miles inland in this area), and (b) a lot of traffic lights are still unpowered, which makes driving at all a little sketchy.
My family went to our local Wegman’s supermarket yesterday… where apparently EVERYONE in town was, too.
Wegman’s had generators and solar power, so they had electricity, supplies, and ice!
I was wondering about the scraps of metal strewn about the parking lot, but didn’t give much thought to them; my dad noted that there no longer seemed to be any cart corrals. OH. Apparently the cart corrals were shredded to bits.
You can probably find this all for yourself, but here are some links I’ve been looking at:
Photos
Transportation
Electricity
Let us know— how’d you make out?
Everyone loves a hurricane!
Well, no, that’s not true, but I’m definitely not the only New Jerseyan curious/ stupid enough to go take pictures on the beach in tropical storm conditions.
(This photo was taken this morning. I’m weathering out Hurricane Sandy three miles inland from the Jersey Shore. For New Providence storm information, check out Patch.com.)
Today, pretty much everything was closed (in anticipation of the hurricane), but it was barely raining yet. Stir-crazy already, my mom and I decided to go out and see what the beach looked like.
Just to, y’know, look around.
First, we tried to go to Ocean Grove, but we were met with patrol cars lining Ocean Avenue and chasing people away with their lights and megaphones.
Disappointed but optimistic, we scuttled over to Bradley Beach (the next town, about 200 feet south), which did NOT have cops out.
The Ocean Grove fishing pier was getting battered pretty badly, and it wasn’t even high tide.
Ed., 10/31/12: Apparently the building in the photo above was washed away just a few hours later. I went back and got photos.
The storm is still pretty far away, though.
I’m not sure how long my electricity and internet will hold out— and I ain’t goin’ out to take photos in the middle of a hurricane— so I may miss a day or two.
This post regards Ocean Grove’s Hurricane Sandy preparations, before the storm hit. For photos of how Ocean Grove fared AFTER Sandy, see a more recent post.
Ocean Grove Methodist Auditorium, Sunday, 10-28-12: Boarding up the Jersey Shore in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.
Yeah, so, many of us in New Jersey are a little uneasy about this upcoming Hurricane Sandy/ Frankenstorm thing.
Hurricane Sandy’s predicted cone of uncertainty. New Jersey’s right smack dab in the middle! Image from National Weather Service.
Hurricane Irene sucked. Snowtober sucked. And the articles I’ve read make Hurricane Sandy out to be some horrible monster of a Perfect Storm that’ll be even worse than either one.
Weeks ago, I requested Monday (10/29) and Tuesday (10/30) off from work, so that I could housesit/dog-sit for my parents on the Jersey Shore while they went to Washington, D.C. At the moment, their train to Washington will probably be canceled, so they may stay put here in NJ. Which leaves me with the question: where should I weather out the storm?
MY PLACE (New Providence)
PROS: Inland
CONS: Overhead wires
MY PARENTS’ PLACE (My hometown)
PROS: Underground wires
CONS: 3 miles from the Atlantic Ocean (there’s a Weather Channel representative reporting live from the Asbury Park beach, which is pretty much exactly where they live)
I’ll keep you guys as updated as I can, but for other news, check the National Weather Service, your local Patch, the Weather Channel, NJ.com, and any other sources you may have.
If I miss a day, I probably don’t have power.
New Providence Daily Photo 