Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc through some parts of New Jersey this past week. Seven tornados touched down, rainfall that caused flooding that claimed lives and property. In Hopewell, where I live, we had 9.31 inches of rain in two hours. Two residents were killed, and we almost lost a police officer who was trying to rescue one of the residents who was killed. It was just that fast. While the Delaware hit 100 year floor levels, it was the smaller tributaries and the canal that did the most damage.
Lambertville during the storm via Pearl Gabel on Twitter
On Wednesday I took the below image when I made some casts on the higher tide, the top image was taken Friday, 24 hours after the worst of the storm had hit. In our area Lambertville, above, took the brunt of the storm, as well as other towns that are surrounded by the smaller streams. Our neighbors 3 and 4 house away lost their homes when Jacobs Creek rose over 20 feet bringing water to the second and third stories of their homes.
We were lucky, inches of water in the basement that knocked out old Betsy the Oil Burner and left us chasing the unrelenting flood for 8 hours through the night until it subsided. Luckily I had my father's dump trailer empty and on hand which made disposing of waterlogged stuff from the basement easy to get rid of. Towns around us still continue to empty their house to the streets and shovel out mud and sewage from the basement and floors that were flooded. I would say, this is their Sandy. In years past it has been the Delaware River that has done the damage, but, again, it was the water from the high ground that flooded the small streams and trapped residents in their cars and houses with no where to run. Many lives have been changed forever due to this, keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
After cleaning up the house we headed south to see how our Cape May place held up. It was mainly a wind event there, as evidenced by the tornado that hit the South Jersey town of Mullica Hill. Some branches down and some flooded yards at our place but we got lucky once again.
We were invited to stop by a Cape May beach and join one of Theresa's friend's sons as he spent the night shark fishing. It didn't take long for the rods to bend. Erin gave it a go on the reel and her shark was a sand bar shark but the largest while we were there was the below bull shark that fell to a dogfish chunk on a 10/0 hook. All were hooked in the corner of their mouths and released quickly after the hook out. Pretty cool to see. We were there for about an hour and half and up to that point he had landed 15 sharks.
