Sinkhole closes Interstate 80 highway in New Jersey.

A section of the Interstate 80 highway in Morris County, New Jersey was closed to eastbound traffic after a sinkhole opened beneath it on Thursday 26 December 2024. The sinkhole, which was about 12 m across and about 12 m deep appeared close to the town of Wharton, and was first spotted at about 7.40 am local time. Engineers have excavated around the area and then backfilled the whole area with rock and concrete, and expect the highway to reopen on Monday 30 December.

A sinkhole which appeared beneath the Interstate 80 highway in Morris County, New Jersey, on 26 December 2024. WABC.

Sinkholes are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides, apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without trace. 

Repairs being carried out to the Interstate 80 highway near Wharton, New Jersey, following the opening of a sinkhole on 26 December 2024. NorthJersey.com.

On this occasion the sinkhole is thought to have been caused by the collapse of an abandoned mineshaft beneath the highway. Morris County was once home to a hundred mine, principally targeting iron ore, many of which dated back to the eighteenth century, and therefore were poorly mapped by modern standards. The last of these mines closed in 1986, but abandoned mines still occasionally cause problems, including sinkholes, in the area. The Mount Pleasant Mine, which opened in 1786 and closed in 1896 is thought to have run beneath the modern Interstate 80 highway. The mine comprised a single inclined tunnel, which averaged 2 m in width and reached over a kilometre in length and more than 424 m beneath the surface.

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More than fifty dead as Hurricane Ida batters the American east coast.

More than fifty people have now died in the US in incidents linked to Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday 29 August 2021. The majority of the deaths occurred in northeastern states, which historically have not suffered many such events and were poorly prepared, with the highest number of deaths was recorded in New Jersey, where at least 23 people have died, mostly of drowning after becoming trapped in cars or flooded apartments, although the state was hit by at least one tornado generated by the hurricane, which is reported to have destroyed its largest dairy farm. 

 

Flooding in Manville, New Jersey, on Thursday 2 September 2021. Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media.

At least fourteen people, including a two year old boy, have lost their lives in New York City, with eleven victims confirmed to have drowned after becoming trapped in flooded basements. The city was forced to temporarily close its streets to non-emergency vehicles to enable rescue work to be carried out, the subway network was closed due to flooding, and thousands of homes were left without power. 80 mm of rain fell in an hour in Central Park, surpassing a previous record of 49 mm, set only a month ago by another tropical storm that hit the city.

 

Flooding in New York linked to Hurricane Ida. AP.

Nine people are reported to have died in storm-related events in Louisiana, including at least one person who drowned, and three who died of carbon monoxide poisoning. However, the fact that the death toll was not much higher has been hailed as a vindication of the billions of dollars that have been invested in the leve system protecting the city of New Orleans following the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Katrina sixteen years ago. The city, which was directly in the path of the storm, suffered wind damage as it was battered by 240 km per hour winds, but only a limited amount of flooding. A plan to evacuate large parts of New Orleans in the event of it being hit by another major hurricane was not put into place because of the rapidity with which the storm formed, developing over the Caribbean Sea only four days before making landfall as the fifth largest storm ever to hit the US coast.

 

Buildings demolished by high winds as Hurricane Ida swept over New Orleans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Elsewhere, at least five people have died in Pennsylvania, two each in Mississippi and Alabama, and one death each in Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia. Many officials in the US, including President Joe Biden, have linked the storm directly to global warming, noting that the average storm hitting the US today does seven times as much damage as in the 1970s, that 'hundred year' storms now happen several times a decade, and that states formerly to the north of the hurricane zone are now regularly hit by these storms.

 

Floodwaters in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, associated with Hurricane Ida. Pittsburgh Post Gazette/AP.

Tropical storms, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

 

The formation of a tropical cyclone. Natural Disaster Management.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

 

The formation and impact of a storm surge. eSchoolToday.

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Whale entangled in fishing gear found off the coast of Atlanta.

The US Coast Guard have recovered the body of a Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, found entangled in fishing gear off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Wednesday 16 September 2020. The 10 m Mammal was found dead resting against a moored dredging platform about six and a half km off the shore on Wednesday 15 September. This is the latest in a series of Whale entanglements on the east coast of North America, with the most recent being an Animal off the coast of New York in August, which was successfully released by divers.

 

A dead Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, off the coast of New Jersey on 16 September 2020. SkyForce10/NBC10.

Humpback Whales were nearly exterminated by commercial Whaling in the first part of the twentieth century. The species has been protected since 1946, and in recent years their population has appeared to be recovering in many areas, now being seen as being of Least Concern  under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. These Whales are becoming increasingly common in waters around the world, but are also increasingly often becoming entangled in fishing tackle, which is not generally designed with Whales in mind.

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Tropical Storm Isias kills at least twelve in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and the United States.

Tropical Storm Isias has killed at least twelve people as it swept across the Caribbean and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The storm reached hurricane strength in the Caribbean, sweeping to the south of Puerto Rico, where it caused high winds and flooding, and led to three known deaths. Chiche Peguero, 53, of Río San Juan in María Trinidad Sánchez Province, who was electrocuted by a falling power line, a woman drowned after being swept into a river in Rincón Province, and a five-year-old boy who was killed by a falling tree at Altamira in Puerto Plata Province. Across the island about 448 000 people were left without electricity, and many roads were flooded. severley hampering travel and communication. The storm swept across the Dominican Republic, causing widespread flooding, and causing the death of a horse and its rider who were again hit by a falling power line. The storm reached the Bahamas on 31 July 2020, causing widespread flooding and wind-damage, before moving towards the coast of the United States.

Workers clearing debris left by Hurricane Isias in the Dominican Republic. Erika Santelices/AFP.

The passed to the east of Florida on 1 August 2020, causing some flooding and power outages, but few serious problems, however as it made landfall in North Carolina it caused more severe flooding, and triggered a series of tornadoes, one of which struck a trailer park in Bertie County, killing at least two people, with around twenty injured and three more still missing. From here it passed northward through Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, causing widespread flooding, wind damage and power-outages, with one person killed in Milford, Delaware, when her vehicle was struck by a falling tree. The storm caused further flooding in Pennsylvania, where it claimed another life as a 44-year-old woman and her car were swept away by floodwaters in Lehigh County.

Damage to boats at Southport Marina in Brunswick County, North Carolina, following the passage of Hurricane Isias. Ken Blevins/Star News.

Further north the storm caused flooding and tornadoes in New Jersey, causing damage to a number of homes and businesses, and the collapse of a church steeple in Ocean City. A 21-year-old man drowned off the coast of Cape May in New Jersey, another person was killed when a falling tree hit their car in Queens, New York, and a third death was also caused by a falling tree in New Haven County, Connecticut.

Damage to hourses in Cape May County, New Jersey, caused by Tropical Storm Isias. NCB10.

Tropical storms are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

The path and strength of Tropical Storm Isias. Thick line indicates the past path of the storm (till 9.00 am GMT on Wednesday 5 August 2020), while the thin line indicates the predicted future path of the storm, and the dotted circles the margin of error at nine and twenty one, hours ahead. Colour indicated the severity of the storm. Tropical Storm Risk.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

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Closure of nuclear power plant allows Sea Nettles to return to New Jersey bay.

Sea Nettles,  have returned to Barnegat Bay in New Jersey following the closure of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station in September 2018. The bay had a thriving ecosystem including a diverse invertebrate fauna before the opening of the power plant in 1969, but this was disrupted by the operations of the plant, which discharged water into the bay at 10°C above the normal temperature in the bay, disrupting the bay's normal wildlife. Since the power plant's closure the amount of water passing through it has been cut by 95%, and environmentalists are hoping that the return of the Sea Nettles will be a precursor to that of other species formerly common in the bay. The power plant was closed after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection agreed with concerns raised by environmental groups, who observed that the hot water was killing the eggs of a wide range of Fish and invertebrate groups, and that the system was sucking in vulnerable species, including Fish and Turtles, which were either trapped by the systems suction grates or pulled through the cooling pipes and killed by the heat within the reactors. A proposed alternative plan, that involved installing an air cooling system, was rejected by the plant's owners Excelon as being too costly. 

The former Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey. nj.com

Atlantic Sea Nettles, Chrysaora quinquecirrha, are a Jellyfish species reaching a maximum size of about 40 cm, which feed principally on zooplankton, making them a useful environmental indicator. The species is found on the Atlantic Coast of the Americas from New England to Brazil. The sting of a Sea Nettle, while unpleasant, is not a serious threat to Humans, usually causing a painful rash that persists for about 20 minutes.

An Atlantic Sea Nettles, Chrysaora quinquecirrha. Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary/NOAA/Wikimedia Commons.

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Velella velella: Hundreds of By-the-wind-sailors wash up on the beaches of New Jersey.

Beach-goers in New Jersey have been reporting hundreds of By-the-wind-sailors, Velella velella, small colonial Hydrozoans distantly related to the Portuguese Man o' War, Physalia physalis, washed up on the beaches of the state, from  Cape May County in the south to Sandy Hook in the north this week. While not unknown in New Jersey it is unusual to see these floating colonial Cnidarians this far north, and it is thought that they may have been pushed northward by strong winds associated with Hurricane Dorian.

A By-the-wind-sailor, Velella velella, on Brigantine Beach in New Jersey on 1 October 2019. Holly Horner/New Jersey Jellspotters/Facebook.

While these brightly coloured and superficially Jellyfish-like animals can be alarming, they are considerably less dangerous than the Portuguese Man o' War, as their toxin is not particularly harmful to Humans, though it is worth avoiding handling them, as they can cause itching and some people may have an allergy to the sting.

By-the-wind-sailors, Velella velella, on Wildwood Beach in Cape May County, New Jersey. Jessica Lennon/The Wildwood Video Archive.

Like the Portuguese Man o' War, By-the-wind-sailors are colonial Siphonophores only distantly related to true Jellyfish, Scyphozoa, though commonly referred to as such. Their bodies are made up of thousands of individual zooids, each with their own sting, tentacles and digestive system. New zooids are formed by budding from other members of the colony, but remain attached to these to form a single colony. These animals are anchored to the sea surface by a highly modified zooid which forms an air sack, filled with a mixture of carbon monoxide defused from the zooid and nitrogen, oxygen and argon from the atmosphere, which are brought into the sack through osmosis. 

The anatomy of the By-the-wind-sailor, Velella velella. TBR's Muscles.

However they are rather smaller, with colonies seldom exceeding 7 cm in length, and differ somewhat in their reproductive cycle, with alternative generations of sexual colonies, which may be male or female and reproduce sexually, budding off asexual stages medusae, which are about a mm across, and produce eggs which can go on to form new colonies.

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