Swing and a miss

Well if you voted team Euro, you were right. What a surprise? This clipper will hit us, but at the sacrifice of getting missed by the coastal low. All we will get is a few snow showers with possible accumulations of an inch in northern Sussex county. **Sigh**

On another note, the extreme COLD last night!

Northwest Jersey

Warm spots (Yes, Warm)

Mount Olive: -2.0 (Elevation +1,200)

Netcong: -5.0 (Elevation +1,050)

High Point: -7.0 (Elevation +1,800)

Wantage: -8.0 (Elevation +1,000)

Cold Spots

Peaquest: -10.0 (Elevation +500)

Walpack: -12.0 (Elevation +300) *Note

Sparta: -13.0 (Elevation +600)

Sussex: -14 .0 (Elevation +400)

***DAILY RECORD BROKE (old record -13.0)

Northeast Jersey

Newark: +5.0

Teterboro: +4.0

New Brunswick: +3.0

The Walpack station went offline at 2 am last night and wasn't turned back on till 9:00 this morning. This station was falling about 2 degrees every hour, but if I even go with 1 per hour than the station hit -18 degrees! I think this station may have passed -20! Now ALL TIME record low for Sussex County NJ is -29 (-34 state wide), but who is to say this station didn't break it? I think NOAA should look into this very carefully with the rate at which this stations temperature was falling. Below is the temperature graph from Walpack last night and I tried to reconstruct it to fit the curves to other valleys in Sussex County. Click for bigger images.

Here is a look at Walpack with google earth. The valley is only 300 feet above sea level and the mountain tops exceed 1,600 feet! It's actually the biggest vertical drop in New Jersey, and personally a prime spot for a ski resort. This valley is potentially the COLDEST spot in New Jersey, but why?

Here is a look at the contours of the mountains all around Walpack. The cold air originates from the mountains above, and then since cold air sinks it falls into the valley. Also the center of the valley as seen from the image above is cleared farm land. This allow for more radiative cooling. This is exactly what happened with Montague and Sussex the past two nights, except they only have tall mountains on one side (High Point) but Walpack is totally surrounded. The picture below shows how the cold air falls down into the steep valley and becomes trapped, it's the perfect set up. I woud say Walpack easily hit -20 last night, or maybe even lower?