Flood-Prone Hoboken Partners With Agency For Better Weather Predictions

HOBOKEN, NJ — The city of Hoboken announced late last week that they'll launch a new one-year program with Tomorrow.io, a Weather and Climate Security Platform they say "will enable the city to better predict, prepare for, and respond to future storm events."

Hoboken has suffered several storms with flash flooding this year, even though none of those storms was a hurricane. After the mile-square city suffered two different flash flooding events a week apart this past July, the mayor called the first one a "50 year storm." But by the next two incidents, including Tropical Depression Ida on Sept. 1, he stopped using the terminology, which applied to a time when extreme weather was less frequent.

READ MORE: Flash Flood Traps Hoboken Shoppers In Supermarket Parking Lot

The Tomorrow platform will offer real-time hyperlocal information such as wind direction, precipitation, temperature, air quality, up-to-the-minute flooding data at specific city intersections, and more.

The cloud-hosted weather prediction service will increase the climate security and resiliency of municipal operations and allow the city to compare and analyze historical weather trends.

“It is imperative that the city of Hoboken continue to be proactive in its approach to preparing for and responding to extreme weather events as climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of storms we face,” said Mayor Ravi Bhalla. “We will be able to pinpoint the exact location and time when certain areas of our city will experience severe weather."

He thanked Gov. Phil Murphy and the New Jersey Department of State’s New Jersey-Israel
Commission, who he said helped bring the technology to the city.

The city has created two resiliency parks capable of withholding hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater and is in the midst of constructing its third resiliency park in Northwest Hoboken. Also, through a partnership with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the city has broken ground on the federal Rebuild by Design project that will help mitigate flooding caused by storm surge.

Tomorrow.io is used by customers including Uber, Delta, Ford, National Grid, and more.

To get Hoboken Patch news alerts on upcoming extreme weather events in Hoboken and more, sign up here. (READ MORE: Excessive Rainfall Risk In Hudson County 'High' Due To Storm Ida)

To learn more about the City’s resiliency and sustainability efforts go to https://www.hobokennj.gov/resources/sustainability.

Storm coming? Check the local radar with this link.

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