Three tornadoes touched down in New Jersey during Wednesday night’s storm – remnants from Hurricane Ida – bringing the Garden State closer to tying – and breaking – The state’s record for tornadoes in a single year.
Wednesday night’s twisters brought the number of tornadoes in New Jersey in 2021 to 13, just four tornadoes shy of tying the record set in 1989, when 17 tornadoes touched down in New Jersey.
The state typically averages just 2 tornadoes each year.
Governor Murphy said that increased severe weather events in New Jersey should be expected, considering the effect of climate change on weather patterns, and said that he is taking steps to help protect lives and property in the state in the event of future storms that wreak havoc similar or worse to the storms from Hurricane Ida.
“As we continue to contend with the reality of climate change, it is no surprise that storms like Ida are happening with greater frequency and intensity,” the governor said. “While New Jersey has more work to do on climate resilience, I am pleased that we have moved the ball forward significantly on this issue already. In the past three years, we’ve invested $1.5 billion in water infrastructure – with another $1 billion to come in the next year.
“In our latest budget, we invested $22 million new dollars in flood resilience projects,” Murphy continued. “We’ve ordered [the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection] to launch needed changes to flood zone rules that will better protect people, property, and infrastructure. And we’ve made it possible for local governments who desire improved stormwater management to establish stormwater utilities, among several other initiatives.”
Last week a letter writer used the record number of tornadoes as proof of human caused climate change, well it isn’t a record number at all, 5 from the record and the fact that the record has stood for 30 years, (from when global cooling was still a thing, which was before it changed to global warming and then to climate chamge so all weather can be blamed on it) if human caused climate change was real this record would have been broken already and the average would also be much higher. Basically do a little research before making extreme claims.