CAPE MAY — The city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) has partnered with ShorelySafe for hyper-localized weather forecasts and online flood maps.
On Sept. 1, City Manager Paul Dietrich said that partnering with ShorelySafe would provide specialized weather forecasting for Cape May.
“You can always watch the weather forecast and whether it’s the weather person in Philadelphia or something like that, it’s always [broader],” Dietrich said. “Joe is going to give us a more hyper-focused forecast for us.”
Dietrich added that, in working with meteorologist Joe Martucci, the OEM was able to move up the fireworks July 4 because of incoming weather.
“We’ve also seen a much more accurate forecasting of lightning, for us to be more accurate in closing the beaches for safety,” Dietrich said. “We’ve been able to keep the beaches open a little longer than when we may have closed them based on a National Weather Service advisory or warning.”
Martucci, who is CEO/president of ShorelySafe, presented information on his company’s specialized weather forecasting.
“Our ShorelySafe program has four pillars here: access to our weather-driven flood mapper; innovative, user-friendly tidal flooding dashboard; ready-to-use video for flooding and weather hazards; and we can reduce property owners’ flood insurance rates,” Martucci said.
He added that ShorelySafe delivers early warnings for rising tides and storms, along with location updates and easily shareable resources.
Residents can access the Cape May flood mapper and flood dashboard on the city’s website. It includes weather-driven flood maps at 5-foot resolution, forecasts of tidal flooding and water depth.
“Cape May is one of the first communities to have this, which really hasn’t been done before in any other company as far as we’ve seen,” Martucci said. “With our flood mapper, you can export animated GIFs and PNGs for public communications.”
Martucci said the tidal flood dashboard pulls information from the Cape May Harbor gauge, showing current water elevation, a 72-hour flood outlook and more.
“It can show the years in which there was tidal flooding and how many events we’ve had,” Martucci said.
ShorelySafe still has more tools coming, including road risk, which Martucci said will soon be provided to the city. He added that it shows which roads could be raised and when, based on current sea level rise projections.
“In a snow event, we’re talking about what is going to happen in the forecast in Cape May,” Martucci said. “We have internal tools with our forecasting, videos and in other communities we’ve done this; it’s been very popular.”
Deputy Mayor Maureen McDade, the council liaison for OEM, noted that watching Philadelphia weather forecasts is not beneficial locally.
“We have the Cape May bubble and bodies of water on each side, so it’s a very unique area and situation,” she said.
Councilwoman Lorraine Baldwin said the city was previously limited in its weather prediction capabilities but now is expanding them by working with ShorelySafe.
By RACHEL SHUBIN/Special to the Star and Wave