Winter Storm Orlena --- it’ll be a while before we forget this one.
The storm buried parts of New Jersey under two feet or more of snow. David Robinson, Rutgers professor and New Jersey state climatologist, said a storm like this is a once-in-a-decade event, the same storm that dumped snow on the Sierra Nevadas a week ago.
“It then made its way across the country and gave snow to the Midwest,” he said, “and then it, if you will, jumped the Appalachians and redeveloped even stronger off the Atlantic coast in becoming a Nor’easter.”
And once here, why did it stay so long?
“It wasn’t able to quickly race out to sea because there’s what we call an atmospheric block,” he said, “a high pressure system in the North Atlantic, that slowed the forward movement, the exit of this storm.”
In Newark, the storm set a record for snow on Feb. 1, 14 inches, breaking a record of half that amount that had stood since 1957.
Robinson said there is a link to global warming here. "A lot of the snow fell with temperatures in the upper 20s and there’s physical principles that suggest that as the temperature warms the atmosphere has the potential of holding more moisture,” he said.
Robinson said 10 or 20 years ago, if temps had been in the teens rather than the 20s, this storm would probably not have packed quite as big a punch.
He said we’ll get the official totals for all parts of the state in about a week.