Some power and phones were still out, and water pumps were chugging away in basements and garages in Jefferson Township, nearby Sparta and other parts of northern New Jersey. The Musconetcong River was still cresting, and dozens of residents of Sparta and Hackettstown were evacuated as a precaution. But water was receding in most of the flooded areas yesterday, and officials and residents of Jefferson Township and in surrounding Morris, Sussex, Passaic, Bergen, Warren, Essex and Hunterdon Counties were counting their blessings as well as their losses as they began the soggy cleanup. Everyone I've seen around town is just in awe. Properly so, said Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist with Pennsylvania State University, who noted that the thunderstorm that struck New Jersey on Saturday was phenomenal.
Most thunderstorms dump vast amounts of rain for a few minutes and pass on.
But this one stood dead still much of the day, dumping rain on a narrow corridor of northern New Jersey hour after hour after hour. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and other officials flew over the flooded areas yesterday to assess the damage and pledged aid. A spokesman for the governor, Peter McDonough, said officials would have a preliminary damage estimate today. In Newton, he said, water mains had been destroyed. In Sparta, where three roads and three bridges had been washed out by the torrential rains, residents of several homes in the path of a potential mudslide were evacuated yesterday.