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Post-storm survey
Monday, 6:28 pm
By Kate
Apr
16
2007
My post-storm travels, this afternoon, were somewhat abbreviated because a good portion of my town is closed off. There was a tremendous amount of flooding this morning and the police had detours set up to keep people away from the water front. However, I was able to get out to Plum Island. It’s usually about a three mile drive from here, straight along the waterfront. Today I had to take the long way around and approach it from the next town over. Once I got out there, aside from huge lakes in the dips in the road, nothing was stopping the gawkers from gawking. Well, except for the actual beach. That was cordoned off. Only residents with their private access to the beach were allowed out there. Not that there is much beach at the moment. Things have changed quite a lot since the last time I was out there.
The public beach access begins with this view from the parking lot. Or it did.
This morning, all the ground beyond the first snow fence is gone. Now there is a sharp drop off immediately after the first snow fence. I couldn’t really get a picture of it today...there were a lot of workers and backhoes there trying to shove mountains of sand up against the parking lot to keep it from caving in. And there were also a couple of trucks in there unloading concrete barriers to line up along the fence to keep people from the edge.
The following view was the immediate beach access-way from the parking lot. It no longer exists. It is gone and there is now a sharp drop off right before the dune in the photograph starts. You’ll have to use your imagination. I couldn’t get a pic of that view, either. In fact, the whole place is so different that my orientation was quite befuddled.
Behind the former dune in the above photograph is a restaurant with a deck on the back. The deck now sits pretty much on the raw edge of nothing A bunch of us were up on the deck taking our photographs.
The next view is looking down over the edge of the deck railing. It used to be a whole lot further away from the water. One more storm like this and there won’t be a deck. Ten years ago, no one would have thought that possible.
Below, I’m leaning over the left side of the deck, looking toward the next door neighbors. They are gathered down on the beach (and up on the dune out of camera range) surveying a bit of a problem. We were told that the concrete block thingies they are looking at were part of a septic system that had been gouged out and deposited on the beach. There is a rather large gully gouged out through the dune where the brown lattice-topped fence sits kind of lopsidedly. Whatever the concrete thingies are, they came from that gouged out gully. The people surveying the situation were clearly distraught.
The houses up the beach are about two major storms away from falling into the ocean. Every storm brings them closer.
I’m fairly certain they had a heck of a night. The waves breached the dunes and carried massive amounts of sand down into the roads beneath. Those houses must have had waves crashing against their back doors.
The next two photos are of a house in the upper end of the village, on the edge of the harbor. It is always an easy way to measure just how badly the ocean is acting up. I wouldn’t want to live in that house.
The first photo is during a normal, benign period. The marsh grass grows and the house’s feet aren’t wet.
Then we have this. All that straw in the photo is dead marsh grass that the roiling waters scraped up and hurled into the road. I’m guessing the folks in the house got their toes a little wet last night.
Below are a couple of street scenes just up the road from the yellow house. The water went well over the road and into the neighboring streets. People will be picking marsh straw out of their shrubbery for weeks to come. Notice the bits of blue sky. That lasted for about a half an hour.
From what I understand, roads will be closed again tonight for the next high tide which is supposed to be almost as bad as this morning’s tide. There’s another mini-storm forming on the tail end of the big one. Guess we’re going to keep messing around with this thing for a couple more days.