By Stephen Appezzato
JERSEY SHORE – Hurricane Erin churned several hundred miles off the Jersey Shore late last month, sending powerful waves and currents toward the coast and reminding residents that New Jersey’s most active stretch of tropical weather is only now beginning.
“It officially begins on June 1, and goes through Nov. 30, throughout the Atlantic basin,” said David Robinson in a recent interview. Robinson is the New Jersey State climatologist and a distinguished professor at Rutgers University.
“Generally, the peak of the season is the first two weeks of September, but it can go on, as we saw with Sandy, until the end of October,” he said. “That’s due to the fact that these storms… get the most of their fuel, if you will, from warm sea surface temperatures.”
“The warmer the water, the more energy they can gain or sustain,” Robinson explained.
As many who reside along the East Coast know, sea surface temperatures are warmest in late summer, as it takes longer for bodies of water to warm up than land.
“That’s the reason why you’ve got this delayed response from the tropics. It takes the ocean a while to warm up,” Robinson noted. That lag explains why the heart of hurricane season lines up with late summer and early fall, not early summer. It also helps account for the range of ways storms affect New Jersey, which often experiences them indirectly.
“When you’re talking New Jersey, you’re often talking about the remnants of a tropical system,” Robinson said. “They can be known as just some remnant rainfall. Sometimes they’re called post-tropical cyclones; it depends what their structure is when they make it to the Jersey area.”
The recent encounter with Erin showed how even a system hundreds of miles offshore can have an effect. “It was so large and at one point powerful that it generated tremendous wave action, a tremendous push of water toward the coast,” Robinson said. “That resulted in rip currents as well.”
In many cases, remnants carry their own risks. Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana in 2021, reached New Jersey as a post-tropical cyclone. “By the time it came up west of the Appalachians and crossed into New Jersey, it had copious amounts of rainfall,” Robinson said. “So that’s often what we deal with in Jersey.”
The range of impacts reflects New Jersey’s geography. “We generally don’t get direct hurricane impacts here,” Robinson said. “By the time storms make it up to Monmouth County, they may have already been over land. They may come ashore to the south and lose strength immediately. They can still pack powerful winds, heavy rains, and rough surf, but they’re not at hurricane levels,” he said.
That pattern does not mean the state is immune to stronger storms, but Robinson said the more common story is indirect effects, like rough surf and winds and heavy rain.
“We don’t face the immediate threat of areas to our south when it comes to direct strikes,” he said. “Oftentimes they’ve morphed into a weaker storm of one type or another when they make it up here, but can still provide us with a good blow,” he added.
Active Stretch Predicted
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) projects an active stretch of storms ahead. Robinson said his office doesn’t make forecasts, but follows predictions made by the NHC, which is part of the National Weather Service.
A few weeks ago, the National Hurricane Center updated its forecast for the season, originally issued around Memorial Day. Robinson said the results pretty much stayed the same, and that the odds favor an average to above-average storm season.
So far this season, six storms have been named. Five were tropical storms with winds below 74 miles per hour, and one – Erin, which was an offshore “monster” – grew into a major hurricane, briefly reaching Category 5 strength before weakening.
Looking ahead, the NHC expects 13 to 18 named storms in total. This means there could be seven to 12 more storms before the season ends in late November. The forecast further predicts five to nine hurricanes, with two to five of those reaching major status.
Robinson stressed that those numbers describe overall activity, not storm paths. The forecast “doesn’t tell you where the storms are going to go,” he said. “That is part of the science that’s quite weak.”
While some groups attempt to predict regional tendencies and paths, Robinson said location-specific accuracy is limited. “Some forecast groups say this is a season when storms will be in the Gulf, others say the Caribbean, others say along the Atlantic coast,” he said. “There’s no real skill at that level. We just know an active season, and you have to play the odds,” he said.
For coastal areas like Monmouth County, Robinson said the important takeaway is awareness. “As far as the folks in Monmouth County go, you have to be vigilant,” he said. “So much of that area is low-lying, you’ve got your two rivers, you’ve got the Shrewsbury and the Navesink, and you’ve got the Raritan Bay.”
With two months of peak season still ahead, “We can’t let our guard down,” Robinson said. “There’s still the threat of a storm anytime between now and early November. While it’s quiet this week, we’ll see what the coming week brings.”
The article originally appeared in the September 4 – September 10, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
