How often do you see snow falling on hurricane-damaged coasts?

[phantom power]

“I am waiting for the locusts and pestilence next,” said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at a press conference on Wednesday, after Winter Storm Athena punished New Jersey with heavy snows, high winds, and a 3-foot storm surge.

The storm brought unexpectedly high snowfall amounts along a swath from Central New Jersey northeastwards across Southeast New York, Long Island, Connecticut, and South Central Massachusetts. The 4.7" of snow that fell at New York City's Central Park was the city's earliest 4-inch snowfall on record.

The old record for earliest 4-inch snow was Nov. 23 in 1989. Last year's Snowtober storm brought the earliest 2" snowfall on record in NYC on October 29, 2011, but the city didn't surpass the 4.7" mark until January 21, as winter basically failed to show up.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2290


Figure 1. A resident clears out destroyed household belongings from his flood-damaged home as snow falls on November 7, 2012 in the Staten Island borough of New York City. How often do you see snow falling on hurricane-damaged coasts? This sort of one-two weather punch is unprecedented in my lifetime. Image credit: AP.

[NoOneMan]

1. Right now people might think this is something we can keep throwing human ingenuity and energy at

...so it might even quiet some people and make them climate complacent.

Soon, nothing will help.

But this is 3000 miles from me. When the drought makes everyone's tummys hurt, I wonder then what will happen.

[CRH]

2. I was wondering the same thing, ...

but I am not familiar with the east coast. I spent years near the left coast, and never saw a snow that would stick at the beach. Slightly inland a sprinkling rarely happened, but nothing like what is happening in NJ now.