By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Sea Isle City escaped with relatively minor damage from a roller-coaster of a storm Monday that pummeled the shore with hurricane-force winds and torrential rain and even included some ominous thunderstorm and tornado warnings that added to the weather drama.
The storm went through multiple stages as it began the day with heavy winds and rain before settling into a deceptive lull for a bit and then exploding with furious gusts that clocked as high as a hurricane-like 82 mph along some parts of the Jersey Shore, the National Weather Service reported.
“That wind was howling,’ said Mike Jargowsky, deputy coordinator of the Sea Isle City Office of Emergency Management.
The entire shore was lashed with strong winds. Gusts were measured at 82 mph at Island Beach State Park in Ocean County around noon, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather service issued a tornado watch early in the day and followed up with a severe thunderstorm warning in the late afternoon as the skies darkened with menacing gray clouds.
There were scattered power outages throughout Sea Isle. A utility pole was blown down at 71st Street in the Townsends Inlet section, Jargowsky said. No flooding was reported.
Homes seemed to take the brunt of the storm damage. There was some damage to siding, porches and roofs, although it was mainly relatively minor in nature, Jargowsky said.
“There was a lot of wind damage,” he said. “I don’t know of anything serious. I haven’t heard of anything serious.”
Jargowsky noted that a piece of plastic fence from another house blew into the yard of his home at 47th Street and ended up in his fish pond. The fish appeared unharmed after he removed the fence from the pond, he said.
An old wooden sign on the roof of the now-closed Springfield Inn bar and nightclub blew off and landed on some electric wires adjacent to the property, Sea Isle Police Chief Tom McQuillen said.
“(There was) a lot of debris on roads and all, but it could’ve been worse,” McQuillen said about the overall impact of the storm in Sea Isle.
Although Sea Isle avoided large-scale damage, other parts of the shore weren’t so lucky. Strong winds ripped off the roof of the Action Marina in Somers Point, a section of the Wildwood Boardwalk collapsed and part of the roof was damaged at the historic Congress Hall hotel in Cape May.
