JERSEY SHORE – Do any of you remember the massive snowman contest more than two weeks ago at the beach? No, of course you don’t. It’s because we’ve barely had any snow this winter – not enough to even build a single snowman. And with the winter months now passed, an important question is being raised again. Why was there so little snow at the shore?
Luckily enough, there is an answer to that question, and it doesn’t exactly involve climate change, a term many believe is taboo.
While our neighbors from Northern Jersey got more than five inches of snow on a couple of occasions this winter, here by the Shore we got the occasional flurries, around an inch of snow, and a whole lot of rain that used to be snow.
According to the New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers University, Dr. Dave Robinson, the reason for the lack of snowfall by the Shore can be attributed to the atmospheric pattern that has been prevalent for the past two to three months.
This pattern has favored a storm track that follows the demarcation between polar air to the north and west, and subtropical (warmer) air to the south and the east. That demarcation line is also referred to as the jet stream. Storms tend to follow the path of the jet stream.
“When those storms track along the jet stream, the wind blows counter-clockwise around them,” said Robinson. “And if it’s to the west it brings warm air as the storm comes through.”
According to him, our area often fell on the warm side of the storms making it not cold enough to snow, thus creating a pattern.
In order for the shore to be blessed by a snowstorm, the storm has to travel to the east to cause the counter-clockwise rotation to bring northern cold winds into the area. Those northern winds meet with the moisture of the nearby storm and create a snowstorm.
“That’s what you need along the coast in particular,” he said. “Because it keeps the wind’s direction from blowing off the water. Once that wind turns off to the water, coastal New Jersey tends to almost always go over to rain.”
While the atmospheric pattern can be pinned as the main reason for the lack of snowfall this winter, the pattern of climate change also has an effect.
According to Robinson, the overall global warming pattern is amplified in the shore and coastal areas. This pattern is likely tied to the ocean’s warming in the mid-Atlantic and the northeast.
“We can be so influenced by conditions offshore,” he said. “We think that some of it is just a shift of wide-spread long-term patterns of circulation in the atmosphere but amplified of the fact the ocean waters at our coast are getting warmer.”
As for the possibility of snow becoming extinct in New Jersey, and especially by the shore, Robinson urges people to not give up on snow.
“We are a long way from seeing snow disappear in New Jersey,” he said.
