Community Corner

Did Irene Live up to The Hype?

Some locals question whether Irene was more hype than hurricane

Did Hurricane Irene live up to the hype?

With 700,000 New Jersey residents at one point or another, thousands of homes flooded in various parts of the state, four people dead and mass transit halted for multiple days, the storm's effects sound much as predicted.

Meteorologists and many residents said it did, indeed, live up to its reputation, though some aren't convinced.

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"We thought it was going to be a lot worse than it turned out to be," Manahawkin resident Manny Ambar told Patch on Sunday, as he was taking a break from surfing in Surf City. "We felt like it skipped right over us."

It's an opinion shared by some Shore residents, who were expecting Hurricane Katrina-like conditions, but found Irene to be more akin to a run-of-the-mill nor'easter in terms of wind speeds and duration.

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Meteorologist Steve DiMartino, of NYNJPAWeather.com, said Irene "wasn't overhyped."

"It was forecast to reach New York City as a weak category one hurricane, and it did just that," DiMartino said. "If you didn't experience hurricane force winds, consider yourself lucky."

DiMartino said that as Irene moved along the coast, it was pulling in dry air from the land, essentially collapsing itself from within. That caused the storm to weaken in terms of both wind and rainfall amounts.

But even though the storm weakened as it neared New Jersey – its eye was barely visible by the time it came ashore at Little Egg Inlet in Ocean County – what is and isn't a major storm is "all relative," DiMartino said.

"The reality is that we have hundreds of thousands of people without power, trees are down everywhere, and some people did feel hurricane force winds," he said. "It wasn't as if they were forecasting for a category three hurricane to hit."

But for those who didn't think Irene was enough, Tropical Depression 12 has now formed 460 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands, and is taking a similar track to the one Irene took in its early stages.

It's too early to tell if it will ever affect the east coast of the United States, but according to DiMartino, "the threat is there."


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