Evie3

Not commenting on the meteorology, but after the storm in January 1996 my garage in the Basking Ridge area was completely covered under a drift from the driveway up over the roof. Opening one of the the 3 bay garage doors accomplished exactly nothing lol. We couldn't believe it, my husband memorialized in on video with our camcorder. That had to be at least a 10 foot drift and I doubt my garage was unique.

There are exceptions to that reasoning, the most extreme one that came to mind was the blizzard of 1888. It was unseasonably mild and raining just before that event.

Respectfully, and I realize that this is OT/Banter, I'm aware that the news was full of stories like this. However, my husband died in our home on hospice care in August of 2020 (absolutely nothing to do with COVID), and was in and out of the hospital 3 times between May 2020 and August 2020, in his case, the VA hospital in East Orange NJ (because he had VA benefits). They had COVID restrictions in place, we were not allowed to visit him while in the hospital etc. He had 3 separate admissions via the ER between the end of May and his passing in August. The ER was empty or nearly empty all three times we were there and we experienced zero delays in getting care for him, even though his condition was not immediately life threatening from a triage standpoint. So, I don't know what to say, should I believe the stories I've been told or what my lying eyes saw? I'm afraid I'm a skeptic.

Just saying, they tried to get away with that during COVID. And did, in many instances.

Pouring snow in Basking Ridge (northern Somerset County)

96 was legendary here in northern Somerset County. Our oldest son was 16 years old and he woke us up at 2 am that night, saying "it's so cool! I want to go out and play in it!!" We put on the floodlights and you could not see anything more than a few inches from our back windows. We told him only if he was attached to the house with a chain lol. Somewhat scary. There was so much drifting that our garage was completely buried from the roof to the driveway, no way out with a vehicle. We also discovered a small pile of snow inside our attic which had somehow been blown in by the wind through a vent. I carried it into a bathtub with a shovel and it melted. Haven't seen anything like the 96 storm in my area before or since.

Just got back from a walk in Basking Ridge and we definitely had a passing Graupel shower. Led to an interesting conversation about the difference between graupel and hail with my son.

That might be the storm that I remember as a very little girl on our farm in Sussex County, the storm that closed down Idlewild Airport for multiple days. We had a very, very long driveway that came off route 202 not far from the Benedictine monastery. My dad co-owned a construction company in Middlesex County and they finally sent their own commercial equipment to plow us out. It was like driving through a snow tunnel. Thankfully we had our own electric generator but we were starting to run low on canned food. This was traumatic for my mother who grew up in Newark and was used to being able to go to the corner store whenever she needed something. I used to think that Green Acres was a parody about my parents lol. After that she became a permanent canned food hoarder....

Mebs! They forgot to activate the cloaking device!!! I live near the Trump golf course, so I got a little carried away-aliens in New Jersey and all that. Apologies for the OT Coneheads reference, now back to the weather....

I remember that well, we were visiting my children's godparents in Manassas, VA (a suburb of DC) over that holiday and their forced hot air HVAC system was running full blast but it could not keep up, I guess those houses weren't designed to deal with temps below zero. On one particularly frigid night we all went to bed bundled up in our ski jackets lol. By the time we were back home I had caught a cold from one of my sons that developed into walking pneumonia. Hopefully this won't be as severe as that was....

Just for perspective IIRC there was a pre-existing drought going on when I moved back to NJ in early 1980 which I think resolved itself a few months after we arrived, and then a really bad drought right after we moved from Middlesex county to our current location in northern Somerset county in 1987. I think I recall national coverage about the 1988 drought on the weather channel back in the day. I wonder how the current situation compares.

Just FYI there was a heat advisory for NJ that continues through 8 PM tomorrow. Ugh.

Had our first son in early September in Tampa, FL. After that, like Scarlett O'hara, I swore "as God is my witness, I'll never go through the last 3 months of pregnancy in a sauna again!" Our other children were born in late March and the beginning of June (by deliberate design LOL). Sounds like your mother had some issues though, I doubt it was weather related. Mine had a full blown case of narcissitic personality disorder. I loved her, but sadly after she passed I felt a level of peace and safety that I had never experienced before. My mother in law was the mother that I never had. She's been gone for years now, but I still miss her terribly. My condolences on your loss.

IDK if this is relevant/interesting to anyone else, but I remember it snowing in June when I was a young child in rural Sussex County (Newton/Sparta area). I remember snow on our flowers which were in bloom (I think they were peonies). This would have been in the early 1960s. I don't know how that happened and/or what the actual low temperature was on that day, from reading discussions on here I understand that under certain conditions snow can fall from the sky even though temperatures are above freezing. Curious if anyone knows if there a record of that event anywhere.

I'm not qualified to discuss the data with the rest of you, but as a rank amateur I just watched this and it blew my mind. It's over an hour long, but I thought it might be of interest. https://rumble.com/v4kl0dn-climate-the-movie-the-cold-truth-martin-durkin.html