The remnants of Ida have mutated into a dangerous coastal storm, threatening the Shore with serious flooding and hampering the search for three crewmen missing since their fishing boat sank off Cape May last night.
"This is going to do some damage," said Stewart Farrell, director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College, near Atlantic City.
Waves incited by wind gusts up to 60 m.p.h. were expected to pound the Jersey Coast into tomorrow night, exacerbating sand losses from last month's storm.
"They're going to wipe out some of that beach," said Lee Robertson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly.
On the mainland, raw northeast winds and periodic rains were forecast into tomorrow night, with minor flooding possible along the lower Delaware River, but bigger issues were anticipated at the Shore.
Cape May County could experience its worst storm flooding since 1994, the weather service said, as onshore winds drive waves landward and inhibit the back-bay waters from draining. On top of that, 2 to 4 inches of rain could fall. The highest tides were expected just before dawn tomorrow.
Wave heights up to 18 feet were reported about 30 miles off Cape May, Robertson said, and that is complicating the search for the three commercial fishermen aboard the Sea Tractor, which evidently encountered storm-agitated seas last night.
The Coast Guard last heard from the 44-foot boat at 7:35 p.m., but a rescue helicopter found only an empty life raft with a strobe light attached. A ship that joined the search located an empty cooler.
The Sea Tractor is registered to Kenneth Rose, Jr., 49, of Newport, N.C. The Coast Guard said the other two on board were his father, Kenneth Rose Sr., 65, and Larry Forrest, 55.
The Sea Tractor, which works out of Cape May docks, probably was returning from a fluke-catching trip. The 11-day fluke season had ended at 6, according to a dock manager at the Lobster House in Cape May.
John Cole, manager of a fisherman's cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach where the Sea Tractor has regularly sold its catch over the past several years, called the missing men "hardworking.
"All we can do is hope for the best and say a prayer for them," Cole said.
Yesterday, the air search continued, but the rough seas forced the Coast Guard to recall its cutters.
The storm also is blamed for shutting down the Townsend's Inlet Bridge, which connects Sea Isle City and Avalon. The bridge is expected to be closed until the end of next week after it sustained damage when a barge crane broke loose from its moorings and rammed it. The nasty conditions are preventing engineers from assessing the damage and keeping crews from making repairs, said a spokesman for the Cape May County Bridge Commission.
The storm, born of the remains of Ida, was forecast to worsen during the next several hours. Typically, tropical storms fall apart after making landfall and getting ripped apart by land forms. Ida, however, is not typical.
It was able to hold together and make it to the Carolina coast, where it was able to regroup and become a powerful low-pressure system, said Alex Sosnowski, a meteorologist with Accu-Weather Inc., in State College, Pa.
It has conspired with an area of high pressure, or heavier air, over southeastern Canada to place the region in an air sandwich. Air moves from areas of heavier to lighter air, similar to the way it escapes from a punctured tire. The high also is blocking the storm from moving.
Since air moves clockwise around highs and counterclockwise around lows, the Shore is in an deal position for a long period of onshore winds.
Said Sosnowski: "This is a pretty potent storm."
Contact Jacqueline L. Urgo at jurgo@phillynews.com
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