The Jersey Shore is still feeling some effects from Hurricane Jose.
Jon Miller is a coastal research professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. While the storm stayed far out at sea, he says it churned up the waters along the New Jersey coast, and it’s still too dangerous
to take a dip in the ocean.
“It’s not during the peak of the storm generally that people go out. It’s as the storm subsides, that’s when the waves die down a bit and makes it seem a little bit safer. People venture out and that’s when they get themselves into trouble. So we’d really like to see people stay out of the water.”
Miller says the ocean could become calmer by the weekend unless another storm
comes our way.
"It's a pretty scary situation out there. The waves are such that I think that most people will be scared out of the water, which is a good move. If you do go in, it's going to be extremely dangerous. We get both rip currents and then you've also got waves larger than you expect."
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Robert Geist says the engineered beaches and dune projects along the coast performed as expected and helped to prevent damage from the storm.
"We're seeing that the event has already caused minor to moderate levels of sloped erosion with several reaches of scarped beach and/or done erosion at the hot spot locations. That's because the surf heights are ranging for 3 to 8 feet with greater heights possible in several locations."
Stewart Farrell directs the Coastal Research Center at Stockton University and he says the hurricane is likely to be beneficial in the long term because it pushes sand toward the shoreline and helps build up the beaches.