By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Sea Isle City got lashed with drenching rain, gale-force winds and street flooding during a powerful storm Tuesday night that proved every bit as formidable as the forecast.
“It was everything they said it was going to be,” said Mike Jargowsky, Sea Isle’s emergency management coordinator.
Overall, it was “a pretty bad storm,” Jargowsky noted.
Nearly 3 inches of soaking rain fell throughout the day and Tuesday night, triggering moderate street flooding in low-lying areas of town.
While floodwater normally comes from the bay, Jargowsky explained that the heavy rain was to blame for swamping Sea Isle during this storm.
“It was fresh water. It was the rain,” he said of the flooding.
Rainfall totals posted by the National Weather Service showed that Sea Isle got a total of 2.94 inches. Sea Isle was in the upper echelon of New Jersey towns and cities getting the most amounts of rain from the storm.
About 1.5 inches of rain had been predicted for Sea Isle, so the nearly 3 inches that actually fell “over-performed” the forecast, Jargowsky pointed out.
At the height of the storm, wind gusts were whipping in the upper 50-mph range. One gust was recorded at 57 mph, Jargowsky said.
Despite the heavy winds, the city did not lose power during the storm and there were no reports of damage.
“These winds are about normal for anyone who has been around,” Jargowsky said of veteran homeowners who have experienced other big storms at the shore.
One oddity of the storm was a port-a-potty that was swept by floodwaters Tuesday night into the middle of the intersection of 40th Street and Central Avenue.
Jargowsky said most homeowners followed the city’s instructions not to place their trash receptacles out on the curb during the storm, which cut down on the amount of debris blown around by the high winds.
As the storm moved away on Wednesday, forecasters were keeping their eye on more bad weather approaching for the weekend. The next storm is expected to linger Friday night into Saturday and could dump up to an additional 1.5 inches of rain on the state and bring wind gusts higher than 50 mph.
