Notes From NJWO Meeting–September 29, 2010

On Wednesday night, I traveled up to the Bergen County Community Services Building in Paramus for the September Meeting of the North Jersey Weather Observers. There are over 100 members in this organization, which has been in existence for over 20 years. The NJWO has a monthly newsletter that goes out called the Weather Shelter, which contains local observations and reports from the previous month as well as any other weather related news. It also has a weather hotline for observations reported in twice per day during normal weather, and more often during severe weather.

It took me about an hour to get up to Bergen County on the Garden State Parkway. I arrived a bit late to the meeting since it started at 7:30 PM. A discussion was already taking place when I walked in. The topic of discussion was the 1938 Hurricane, better known as the Long Island Express. Part of the meeting was devoted to the statistics concerning the storm. The maximum sustained winds, minimum central pressure, speed that the storm was traveling, and the track it took. There was also some discussion about how such a storm could impact the Tri-State area today, and whether or not residents would be prepared. There was general agreement that this area is not prepared for such a storm.

There were video presentations on the storm that included a track of the storm and its impacts, newsreel footage of the WPA’s response to the storm, and interviews with a couple of survivors from the storm. Handouts of recent articles on the storm were also given. There were a handful of people in attendance, but I did get to meet some of them, and talk about things. Overall, it was a good time, and I’m glad I got myself up there to participate. The next meeting of the NJWO will be on October 9th when members travel up to the third annual Tri-State Weather Conference in Danbury, Connecticut.