Growing Up With Storms in Ocean City, New Jersey
Storms in Ocean City, NJ became part of my life almost as soon as I moved there in 1984. Hurricanes, tropical storms and winter nor’easters would mark different periods of the next forty years, but the first one I really remember was Hurricane Gloria.
Gloria arrived on September 27, 1985, the day after my 12th birthday.
We evacuated Ocean City the night before and stayed at the fire station in Tuckahoe. When we returned the next day, West 55th Street was still underwater.
The south end of Ocean City looked different then. Behind Ocean Village South was mostly marshland. I had a sailboat, and I remember sailing it through the floodwaters.
I was twelve years old, and somewhere in all of that I became fascinated with storms.
That fascination stayed with me throughout the forty years I lived in Ocean City.
Most of the Time, I Stayed
There’s something I need to make clear about all these storms.
Despite the hurricanes, tropical storms and countless nor’easters I experienced over the years, I only evacuated Ocean City twice: for Gloria in 1985 and Sandy in 2012.
Most of the time, I stayed.
And many times, I went outside.
I would walk around Ocean City during storms, sometimes in driving rain and heavy winds and, during winter nor’easters, in blowing snow.
There could be almost nobody around. Streets that normally had people, cars and activity were suddenly empty. The wind could be howling, rain coming sideways or snow blowing through the streets, but underneath all that noise was a strange sense of solitude.
The calm during the rage.
That’s probably the best way I can describe it.
Being in the middle of the wind, rain or snow was a rush in itself. Eventually, though, I would make my way toward the beach.
You could often hear the ocean before you really saw it.
Then you’d get there and look out at an ocean that seemed genuinely angry. The waves, wind, blowing sand and sound of everything happening at once could make the normal Ocean City beach almost unrecognizable.
Standing there had a way of putting things into perspective.
It made you realize just how small you really are.
Hurricanes and Nor’easters in Ocean City
Living year-round in Ocean City also taught me that hurricanes aren’t the only storms that deserve respect.
A hurricane gets the attention. It has a name. There are forecast tracks, television coverage and days of watching that cone move across the map.
A nor’easter can be a different animal, especially in winter.
Meteorologically, the two aren’t the same. Hurricanes develop over warm tropical or subtropical waters and get their energy from warm ocean water. Nor’easters develop farther north and are associated with the collision of cold and warmer air masses.
From the perspective of someone living on a barrier island, however, both can bring powerful winds, coastal flooding, tremendous waves and beach erosion.
One of the noticeable differences is how long a nor’easter can hang around.
A tropical system may move through relatively quickly. A nor’easter can seem to sit offshore and grind away at the island through one high tide, then another.
And then there is snow.
There is something completely different about Ocean City during a winter nor’easter. The summer crowds are already gone. Add heavy wind and snow and the place can feel almost abandoned.
No tourists.
Few cars.
Sometimes seemingly nobody anywhere.
Just the storm and that constant roar coming from the ocean.
I loved walking through it.
The Ocean Usually Knew First
There was another reason I paid attention whenever a hurricane appeared somewhere in the Atlantic.
I surfed.
For many of the storms that affected Ocean City, I surfed either before the storm, as the swell arrived, or afterward while the ocean was still carrying its energy.
A hurricane didn’t have to hit New Jersey to matter.
Sometimes it could be hundreds of miles offshore. The sky over Ocean City might not look threatening at all.
But the ocean knew it was there.
The swells would begin arriving.
The waves would build.
And I would start paying attention.
That became another part of experiencing storms in Ocean City: watching something happening far out in the Atlantic announce itself on an Ocean City beach one swell at a time.
Hurricane Gloria: Where It Started
Hurricane Gloria was my introduction to all of this.
It was my first hurricane and my first hurricane evacuation.
I remember Tuckahoe.
I remember returning to Ocean City.
I remember West 55th Street underwater.
I remember taking that little sailboat out into the flooded area near the marsh.
What I don’t remember is being frightened enough by Gloria to want nothing to do with another hurricane.
Apparently, I had the opposite reaction.
I wanted to experience them.
Over the following years, storms became unusual markers in my life in Ocean City.
Some brought surf.
Some brought flooding.
Some brought wind and rain.
And some simply gave me an excuse to walk around an almost completely empty island and see what the ocean was doing.
The Perfect Storm and the 1990s
By the time the Halloween Nor’easter of 1991 arrived, better known as the Perfect Storm, I was no longer the twelve-year-old kid experiencing his first hurricane.
The storm brought tremendous waves, flooding and severe beach erosion to the New Jersey coast.
Then, on September 26, 1992, Tropical Storm Danielle affected the region.
My birthday.
Again.
Danielle brought high tides, beach erosion and tidal flooding along the South Jersey coast.
There would be plenty more storms, but one from the 1990s stands out for a completely different reason.
Someone took my picture.
Josephine: A Walk Through the Storm
In October 1996, Tropical Storm Josephine formed in the Gulf of Mexico, crossed Florida and eventually moved northeast along the East Coast.
My mother owned a condo around 35th Street and the bay, in the complex behind the Acme.
And I went walking.
That was simply something I did during storms.
While most people were sensibly inside, I liked being outside in the wind and rain, experiencing Ocean City when almost nobody else was around.
During Josephine, somebody else was out there too.
A photographer from The Press of Atlantic City took my picture walking through the storm. As I remember it, the photograph appeared in the newspaper.
My wife says we still have the clipping somewhere.
I’d like to find it.
Not because it proves I was there. I already know that.
I want it because somewhere in that old newspaper is a photograph of a younger me doing exactly what I’m describing here: walking around Ocean City in the middle of a storm simply because I wanted to experience it.
When I find the clipping, it belongs right here.
Irene
In August 2011, Irene came up the coast and made landfall near Brigantine as a tropical storm.
There was flooding, beach erosion, wind damage and widespread power outages.
But I didn’t evacuate.
Through all those years and all those storms since Gloria, I had stayed on the island.
One year later, that changed.
Sandy
Sandy was only the second storm that caused me to evacuate Ocean City.
Twenty-seven years had passed since Gloria.
My life was very different.
I wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid leaving Ocean City and spending the night at the fire station in Tuckahoe.
I had two children of my own.
Brian was ten.
Kaiya was six.
We evacuated and stayed at a hotel in Vineland.
What stays with me most, however, isn’t leaving.
It’s coming home.
We returned over the 34th Street Bridge and found a line of cars waiting to enter Ocean City. Police officers were checking identification before allowing residents back onto the island.
Once we got through, we drove down Central Avenue from 34th Street toward 59th.
Mostly, we looked.
There was sand everywhere, along with the remnants of puddles left behind by the flooding. Some streets were still completely underwater.
I remember one house around 59th Street in particular. A downstairs windowpane had broken, and sand and water had poured into the room.
The island sat underneath low, dark cloud cover.
People were beginning to emerge and take in what had happened. Police officers and firefighters were out. Homeowners were starting to pick up remnants and debris.
Other people seemed to be doing exactly what we were doing.
Looking.
Trying to take in the damage.
That drive from 34th to 59th is one of my clearest memories of Sandy.
Ocean City was still there.
It just didn’t look like the Ocean City we had left.
From Gloria to Sandy
There is an odd symmetry between Gloria and Sandy.
Gloria came the day after my 12th birthday. It was my first hurricane and the first time I evacuated Ocean City.
Twenty-seven years later, Sandy became the second.
This time I was the parent.
Brian was nearly the age I had been when Gloria came through, and Kaiya was six.
After Gloria, I returned as a twelve-year-old and found West 55th Street underwater.
After Sandy, I returned as a father with my children, waited at the 34th Street Bridge while police checked IDs, and then drove south through an island covered in the remains of the storm.
Those two hurricanes became bookends to a long stretch of my life in Ocean City.
But they were the exceptions.
Most of the time, I stayed.
Forty Years of Storms in Ocean City, NJ
I lived in Ocean City from 1984 until 2024.
Looking back at the storms that passed through or affected the coast during those forty years creates an unusual timeline of my life there.
Gloria takes me back to being twelve years old.
The Perfect Storm reminds me of what a nor’easter could do.
Josephine reminds me of walking through a storm and ending up in the newspaper.
Other hurricanes remind me of surfing.
Sandy takes me immediately back to that drive down Central Avenue with Brian and Kaiya, looking at sand, water and damaged homes.
And the winter nor’easters remind me of an Ocean City most summer visitors probably never experienced.
Empty streets.
Cold wind.
Rain or snow blowing sideways.
Almost nobody around.
And always that ocean waiting at the end of the walk.
I don’t want to romanticize hurricanes or nor’easters. I’ve seen enough of what flooding, wind and water can do to understand their destructive side.
But I would also be lying if I said I didn’t love experiencing storms.
There was a rush in standing in the middle of all that weather. There was something remarkable about walking through an almost deserted Ocean City while a storm raged around me.
Then I’d reach the beach.
No matter how many times I did it, seeing the Atlantic like that could stop me.
An ocean that was familiar almost every other day of my life suddenly looked enormous, violent and completely indifferent to everything around it.
For all the years I lived on that little barrier island, storms provided the occasional reminder of something that was very easy to forget.
Ocean City might have been home.
But the ocean was always bigger.
