The Jersey Shore is coping quite nicely with the equivalent of a nasty nor'easter.
There were some trees and lines down, but not much in the way of major flooding from that storm surge that never quite surged as much as feared.
As you can see from the photo of me and Betty above, the waves got fairly large by late Saturday evening, but only slightly larger than in a lot of winter nor'easters that don't even make the news.
But imagine you were a bennie evacuated from, say, Lavallette to your home in North Jersey.
This Star-Ledger story indicates that maybe you shoulda stayed at the Shore:
Rivers statewide are experiencing major flooding conditions that are expected to worsen throughout the day as waters rise.
“This is a disaster,” said David Robinson, the state climatologist. “In some places, this could beat (Hurricane) Floyd.”
The Raritan River in Manville and Bound Brook, often the hardest hit by flooding, was more than 7 feet above flood stage and rising at 10 a.m. Sirens have been wailing in Manville warning people to get out since 3 a.m. as the Raritan River water level spiked overnight and flooding began to envelop the Somerset County community.
A similar situation is playing out across New Jersey (see interactive map below).
The Millstone, Saddle, Peckman, Passaic, Rockaway, Delaware and Ramapo River were all reporting flooding this morning. Record flooding is already occurring along the Assunpink Creek in Trenton and the Rockaway River in Boonton.
Not much of that's occurring in my neck of the woods. Yet the Governor shut down the southbound lanes of Ocean County's major roadway, the Parkway, at 8 p.m. Friday - a full day before the storm actually hit. This created a lot of unnecessary traffic jams in place like Toms River, as I noted.
By the way, read that list of rivers that are flooding.
You don't see the Toms on it, do you?
The Shore is used to receiving a lot of water, and set up well to sort it out. It's those northern areas that have the horrendous flooding.
Yet for some reason the media and the government are obsessed with pestering people at the Shore whenever a storm is expected.
Next time, guys, leave the Shore alone and shut down the roads that lead to the truly hazardous areas, such as Interstate 78, 80 and 287.
As for the bennies at the Shore, they tend to leave anyway when a bit of rain is in the forecast. But they're probably better off staying considering all that flooding up north.