Talk about the rain deer.
A Christmas Eve storm on Thursday night made it difficult to travel even for a guy driven by a bright red nose, as gusts of strong wind and heavy rain invaded the state.
For many, it was a dark night, with the winds knocking down trees and power lines. At 11:15 pm, more than 24,200 people were without electricity in New Jersey.
Jersey Central Power & Light Co., which is often hit hard because much of its service territory is densely wooded, had more than 7,600 customers without power. About 2,600 of them were in Middlesex County. Public Service Electric & Gas Co., the state’s largest electricity company, had nearly 8,000 customers – more than 5,000 of them in Bergen County.
Even Bruce Springsteen was talking about the weather:
The National Meteorological Service called it a strong and complex storm, which is expected to weaken and dissipate over the weekend, with high pressure building on the area. Meteorologists had expected winds of 60 to 70 mph over the barrier island of New Jersey and in coastal parts of the state.
On Monday, another low will cross the north of the area and cause a cold front that will extend across the region, meteorologists said.
According to AccuWeather, the storm swept east. Unlike last week’s storm, which had a new supply of arctic air to extract and brought heavy snow, this time the strong winds from the south brought the warmest air from the south to the front of the system.
The first major snowstorm of the season that hit New Jersey dropped more than a foot of powder in parts of the state. AccuWeather said this storm is likely to erode snow cover in New England and the middle of the coastal Atlantic. This could add to the great floods that are also in the forecast.
Meteorologists say that rivers and streams will rise with all the precipitation, possibly overflowing their banks and there is a chance of flooding in low or poorly drained areas.
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Ted Sherman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL.