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Cape May, New Jersey sits at the southernmost tip of the Jersey Shore, a narrow spit of land surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Delaware Bay, and countless tidal creeks and marshes. This geography has made the town one of America’s oldest and most beloved seaside resorts, but it has also left it exposed to some of the most powerful storms the Atlantic has produced. Over the past two centuries, Cape May has been shaped as much by disaster and recovery as by tourism and charm. The following is a look at six storms that left lasting marks on the town, and shown just how important tourism is for the area as the town has made changes to protect dining, lodging, and cultural opportunities.
Key takeaways:
- An unnamed hurricane in 1821, sometimes called the Great September Gale, is believed to have passed its eye directly over Cape Island and remained the last major direct hit on New Jersey until Sandy in 2012.
- The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 was a fast-moving but powerful storm that destroyed many homes along the Cape May coastline and was notable for the first-ever use of aircraft reconnaissance to track a tropical cyclone.
- The Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 was a slow-moving, multi-day nor’easter that produced five separate high tides and caused catastrophic destruction along Beach Avenue, ultimately reshaping the town’s approach to coastal protection.
- Hurricane Gloria in 1985 brought strong winds and outages to the region, but its most severe conditions largely missed the New Jersey coastline.
- Hurricane Irene in 2011 triggered Atlantic City’s first-ever evacuation and prompted a mandatory evacuation of Cape May County, though the town ultimately avoided major damage.
- Hurricane Sandy in 2012 became the costliest natural disaster in New Jersey history, though Cape May itself was spared the worst of it thanks to the storm’s track and timing relative to high tide.
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Long before modern hurricane tracking existed, an unnamed storm struck Cape May directly on September 3, 1821, with winds estimated at 135 miles per hour. Sometimes called the Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane or the Great September Gale, it is believed the eye passed directly over Cape Island, producing a period of eerie calm before the storm resumed. A storm surge exceeding ten feet reportedly cut Cape May off entirely from the rest of the county. It remained the last major hurricane to strike New Jersey directly until Sandy arrived nearly two centuries later.
The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 was a quickly moving storm that battered the Cape May coast for only two to three hours. It peaked as a Category 5 storm near the Bahamas before weakening to a Category 2 by the time it reached Long Island and Rhode Island. Because storm naming wasn’t yet standard practice, the Miami Weather Bureau dubbed it the “Great Atlantic Hurricane” simply to warn the public of its danger. The storm caused major damage up and down the Jersey Shore, including significant home losses in Cape May, and it holds a notable place in meteorological history as the first tropical cyclone tracked using aircraft reconnaissance.
No storm has left a deeper scar on Cape May’s landscape than the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962, also called the Great March Storm. Striking between March 5 and 9, this nor’easter moved unusually slowly, which allowed it to batter the coast with five consecutive rounds of extraordinarily high tides over roughly three days. Forecasters at the time badly underestimated the storm, predicting only modest snow and slightly elevated tides, so residents had little warning before the ocean surged across Beach Avenue and into neighborhoods. Hunt’s Pier was the first major structure to collapse, and Convention Hall, though it remained upright, lost its back wall, windows, and flooring. Much of the boardwalk was torn from its pilings and hurled into nearby buildings, compounding the destruction. Remarkably, no one in Cape May died, but over a thousand homes across the county were destroyed. In the aftermath, Cape May leaned hard into recovery, using state and federal funding not just to rebuild but to construct a new seawall and promenade, completed the following year, and to launch a historic preservation movement that helped define the town’s modern identity.
Hurricane Gloria arrived in September 1985, generating strong winds and widespread power outages. Although it was described by some as a storm of the century due to the scale of evacuations it triggered, its most intense winds stayed east of the storm’s center, sparing the New Jersey coastline the worst of its force before it made landfall farther north on Long Island and in Connecticut.
Hurricane Irene, in August 2011, made landfall as a weakening storm near the Little Egg Inlet after being downgraded from hurricane status. Cape May County underwent a mandatory evacuation, and Atlantic City experienced its first evacuation order ever issued. Local business owners scrambled to secure supplies, boarding up storefronts and clearing outdoor furniture from the Promenade and Washington Street Mall. In the end, the storm largely spared South Jersey, and by Monday morning residents were already restoring the town ahead of the Labor Day weekend crowds.
Hurricane Sandy in 2012 stands as the most economically devastating storm in New Jersey’s history, with business losses reaching an estimated $30 billion statewide. It made landfall near Brigantine with wind gusts topping 90 miles per hour, prompting the closure of schools, courts, casinos, and state offices across the region. Cape May County ordered evacuations in the days before landfall, and Governor Chris Christie later postponed Halloween and expanded electronic voting access because of the storm’s disruption. Cape May itself fared better than much of the state. The eye passed just north of the town roughly two and a half hours ahead of high tide, and a favorable wind shift helped limit the storm surge that hit the immediate area. Crews still had to clear large amounts of sand from Beach Avenue and Poverty Beach, but Cape May avoided the catastrophic flooding seen elsewhere on the coast.
Together, these storms tell the story of a resilient town that has repeatedly rebuilt itself, strengthened its defenses, and preserved its character in the face of the Atlantic’s most powerful weather.
