What started as two small showers near Philadelphia blossomed into severe thunderstorms Monday, which brought a water spout to Stone Harbor, a funnel cloud near Buena Borough and numerous reports of flooded roads throughout South Jersey.
“I was watching the incredible clouds and swirling winds over the beach. All the sudden in front of me these two water spouts started forming and kept going over the ocean for about a minute or two. It was an awesome sight and definitely a first in my 24 years in Stone Harbor,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a Penn State University meteorology graduate.
At 6:07 p.m., video from Rosenberg showed two water spouts — tornadoes that form over a body of water — swirling in the surf off the Stone Harbor beach. One of the two spouts appears to be very close to the sand in the beginning of the footage, before moving out to sea.
The rotating air didn’t stop there. Also Monday evening, Dacia Slick, of Buena, took a video of a funnel cloud toward Folsom and Hammonton.
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“When I saw the cloud I was super excited, but I did doubt myself in thinking that it wasn’t anything cool, such as an actual funnel cloud ... because I couldn’t see past the tree line,” Slick said. “After it dissipated, there was a gap and some light the broke through this circular hole in the clouds. It gave me more assurance this was something worth reporting.”
A funnel cloud is a rotating column of air that does not reach the ground. If a funnel cloud reaches the ground, it becomes a tornado. Slick says there was no known damage caused the storm in the vicinity, which indicates the funnel cloud did not touch down.
High heat — Atlantic City International Airport and Millville Executive Airport both reached 94 degrees Monday — provided plenty of energy for storms to work with. Without any morning cloud cover or fog, South Jersey maximized its storm potential, as the strong early July sun created additional instability in the atmosphere. Moisture was plentiful, evident by dew points in the 70s, firmly in the sticky category. A cold front cutting through New Jersey provided the spark for thunderstorm development, which started around noon in Philadelphia.
However, it was the slow-moving nature of the storms that brought the flooding rains. Hammonton picked up the most in the region, with 3.07 inches reported by the National Weather Service.
At 5:15 p.m., street flooding was reported in Pleasantville. At 5:50 p.m., flooding occurred at Third Street and West Avenue in Ocean City, with multiple partially submerged vehicles, up to the hood.
In Somers Point, inches of water covered MacArthur Boulevard, near the Wawa. Dan Forshaw, 28, of Somers Point, saw stranded cars and struggled to get to his house.
“When I got to Somers Point, police had Bethel Road blocked by the Lukoil. It looked like two stranded cars there. Heading south on Route 9, I made a right on Groveland Avenue and the first block in was already ... flooding,” said Forshaw, who reported 2.21 inches in his Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network rain gauge. “The low-lying areas of each block past that, for six blocks, were all flooded. I had to turn around and come down the next block to get to my house, and even still I couldn’t pull in front. Had to park two houses down from mine.”
With the jet stream to the north of the region, the steering currents were weak. Thunderstorms that formed moved slowly throughout the afternoon and evening. Sen. Frank S. Farley Marina in Atlantic City received 1.41 inches of rain, 0.46 inches of that in five minutes, which is unusual. There is a 50% chance of that happening in a given year, according to the National Weather Service.
In addition to the water spout, funnel cloud and flooding rain, small hail, under 0.75 inch in diameter, fell in Lawrence and Downe townships in Cumberland County.
A severe thunderstorm watch was issued by the Storm Prediction Center, a government agency in Norman, Oklahoma, at 1:35 p.m. This was the ninth severe thunderstorm watch in New Jersey in 2020.
