20 Years Later, Remembering the 'Perfect Storm'

Two decades later, despite the help of a movie starring George Clooney, memories of the "Perfect Storm" are beginning to fade among some Jersey Shore residents.

"Oh, you mean the Christmas storm, right," is the most common response given by locals when asked about the weather event.

That storm, which blew through the Shore area in December 1992, may have caused more damage and packed a significantly harder punch, but the "Perfect Storm," commonly referred to as the "Halloween Storm," may always be the most famous.

The massive storm system developed in the Atlantic during the days preceding Halloween in 1991, affecting the New Jersey coast on Oct. 28 and 29 of that year. According to archived National Weather Service reports from the time, the storm formed when a low pressure system moved off the coast of Nova Scotia and tracked southward, rather than dashing out to sea, and formed an extratropical cyclone. That storm system combined with Hurricane Grace to form an even bigger storm, since the warm air from Grace and the cold air from the low pressure system created something of a meteorological explosion.

Massachusetts is commonly known to have gotten the worst of the storm, but New Jersey also felt the effects. The storm caused enormous beach erosion, flooding and forced the closure of shellfish beds for months.

"We had the second-highest tide since the 1944 hurricane," said Margaret Buchholz, one of the authors of "Great Storms of the Jersey Shore."

Buchholz, a Harvey Cedars resident who previously published the local Beachcomber newspaper on Long Beach Island, said after the storm, she delayed the publication of her book by a year so its story could be told. She was also "this close" from being personally affected by the storm.

"The water was only two inches from coming in," she said, speaking of her bayfront house. "That was the closest we ever got."

Long Beach Island, Ocean City and Sea Bright were the New Jersey communities most affected by the storm, according to her book. More than 200 Sea Bright residents were forced to evacuate when waves crashed over that town's sea wall, according to an Associated Press article of the time.

The scope of the storm's wrath was evident in a headline that appeared the following week in The SandPaper, a newspaper that covers Long Beach Island.

"Fit to be Tide" was the catchy headline, heralded in gigantic typeface over a photograph of two men in boats motoring down Long Beach Boulevard in front of the B&B department store that was, at the time, located in Beach Haven.

Another article from The SandPaper that week quoted local officials who were worried about recouping the cost of restoring beaches and public docks that were taken out by the storm.

Federal aid would never come, however. According to Buchholz, Governor Jim Florio's request to have the Shore region declared a disaster area was denied due to funding constraints put on FEMA following a number of other hurricanes that season, as well as an earthquake in California.

As for the "Perfect Storm" monicker, that was made famous by author Sebastian Junger, whose book of the same name chronicled the tragic voyage of the fishing boat Andrea Gail, whose crew all died in the storm while swordfishing northeast of Sable Island in Nova Scotia. The book was written in 1997; the movie, starring Clooney as Capt. Frank W. Tyne, Jr, came out in 2000.

Ironically, the boat that served as the Andrea Gail in the blockbuster film was actually the Lindsay L, a scallop boat docked in Barnegat Light.

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