Lightning — Monmouth, New Jersey

2012-07-07 · near Monmouth Beach, Monmouth, New Jersey

Event narrative

A 48-year-old woman was struck by lightning in Monmouth Beach at the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Sunset Lane. She died the next day.

Wider weather episode

A complex of strong to severe thunderstorms moved through the central third of New Jersey during the early evening of the 7th. This complex was fueled by high temperatures that reached as high as around 100F and triggered by an approaching cold front. Numerous trees were knocked down. Dozens of cars were damaged and downed trees also damaged several homes. Hardest hit were southern Monmouth and northern Ocean Counties. Nearly 100,000 homes and businesses in the Jersey Central Power and Light and Atlantic City Electric's service area lost power. A power outage caused people in Seaside Heights to be stuck on a sky ride as the severe thunderstorm moved through. On the morning of the 8th, there were still about 18,000 customers without power. That dropped to 14,000 later that day. It took until the night of the 9th for power to be fully restored to everyone. Frequent cloud-to-ground lightning also occurred and one woman was struck and killed by lightning in Monmouth County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.3448, -73.9740)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 403213. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.