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Impact of Hurricane Sandy

All of the following photographs were taken between 12:30PM and 2:45PM today (October 30, 2012) after the peak of the last elevated high tide resulting from Hurricane Sandy.

Looking down Seaside Avenue from the intersection with Post Avenue.

Waves were still crashing against the seawall. You can also see that an entire tree was hung up on the jetty.

Digging out enough room for cars to pass (near the Seaside Ave-Post Ave intersection).

Notice the bench (made of concrete) that has been thrown around and half-buried in the rubble on the beach.

Plenty of erosion near the sidewalk. At this point, much of major road clearing was complete and we had been allowed to move west down Seaside Ave from the intersection with Post Ave.

TONS of sand… literally…

And then we come to our cottage. It’s still standing -which is great- but the wall beneath the porch is gone and we definitely lost some other siding.

At this point (about 1:00PM or so) the water was still extremely high, as evidenced by the view from the stairs in the back. Oh, and those long slats stuck in the reeds to the right… that’s our siding.

Also, if you look to the left-hand side of the photo on the opposite side of the marsh, you’ll see a shed (it’s pretty far off, so you might have to squint). That shed used to be a few houses down from ours before the hurricane. It literally floated all the way across the marsh in one piece and got dropped on the other side.

The sand is piled as much as 3 to 4 feet deep; truly an incredible amount of sand.

The largest Pitch Pine on the dunes was completely undermined by the storm surge. After at least 6 to 10 feet of the dunes had been eaten away, there was nothing left to hold it in the ground and it must have simply fallen over. Otherwise, it was still intact.

Debris washed up on the beach…

For the most part, this area of the public beach held up rather well. Last year it was undermined and ultimately destroyed once the seawall broke. This year, the seawall held. The newer concrete slab was still intact. As you can see though, all of the sand that used to be beside the concrete slab has been washed away.

So much for those benches.

Again, I want to point out how well the town beach parking lot held up this year; pretty much unscathed! That’s especially remarkable, since the surge was so strong that it was able to toss around those enormous concrete blocks!

Looks like plywood just couldn’t hold back the surge from rushing into this cottage. You’ll notice that, even more than an hour after high tide today, waves were STILL breaking over their patio wall. Waves were also still battering the sea walls of cottages in the distance.

On Seaside Avenue, near the town beach parking lot…

Hey look, more of our siding! Quick… grab it!

Did I mention the sand?

Here you can see the lines on the basement door that show the average water level at the peak of Hurricane Sandy. And, of course, that only represents the average water level… it doesn’t include the 3 to 7 foot waves.

Well, the beach now starts at the very bottom of the front porch stairs…

Jordan and Optimus taking a look at the exposed roots of undermined Pitch Pines on the dunes.

This is another shot of the concrete slab near the food stand at the town beach. Notice that there’s fragmented asphalt underneath the concrete. That’s what was left of the old asphalt pad after Hurricane Irene… it had been covered up with the new concrete.

Seaside Ave at Dolphin Ave: sand covering the street.

The damage to this cottage was just shocking. After seeing this place, I can only be thankful that our cottage was spared by comparison.

Okay, this photo requires a short explanation. This is a Mantis Shrimp, a creature that avoids the seashore, instead preferring deeper water of Long Island Sound. To put it plainly, you will never find these creatures while walking the sandbars. The fact that we found this one in a muddy driveway on Seaside Ave is a testament to the intense power of this hurricane; it really churned up EVERYTHING in the Sound.

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Impact of Hurricane Irene

I took all of the following photographs between roughly 3PM and 5PM on Sunday, August 28. We walked west along the beach to the shoreline beside Menunketesuck Island. We also walked west along the street to the roads within the Pilot’s Point community.

A few waterlines on the siding of the cottage suggest that the water level rose to the ceiling of the basement, however these waterlines aren’t visible in any of my photographs. I have drawn a red, dotted line on the first photograph which demonstrates where the mean waterline was along the siding. The position of debris lodged in the back steps, as well as other waterlines, indicate that swells occasionally rose at least one foot above the mean waterline during the surge (perhaps higher). The interior living space did not take on any water.

Here’s our cottage… still in one piece, thankfully.

But… as you can see, there was an enormous amount of sand on the street. Bulldozers tried to pile it up as much as possible, allowing travel in at least one lane.

The walkway to the beach was tossed around and you can see just how much water must have been traveling over it.

The entire beach looks different, since all the loose sand has been washed away. What remained was a uniformly flat, hard-packed sand. In some areas, a considerable amount of dune plants were washed away.

All of the wooden jetties were unscathed.

Here you can see just how much of the beach was displaced… at least the top 12″ of beach sand is gone, maybe more in some places. Much of this sand, of course, ended up on the street.

This set of stairs was buried in the sand on the beach about 100 feet west of our cottage…

…it was buried so deeply that it couldn’t be moved by hand.

Closer to the ice cream stand, there were a few large, driftwood trees left on shore.

The asphalt and tables beside the stand were demolished.

Everything sank as the sand washed out from underneath, allowing the surge to tear apart the asphalt.

The concrete tables were tossed around.

To the left in this photo, you can see that the top literally ripped off of the seawall in front of the public parking lot. This allowed seawater to rush underneath the walkway and parking lot, causing incredible damage.

In this shot, you can also see that entire slabs of asphalt, after having broken loose, were actually tossed around by the water. The chunk in the middle of the frame was moved with enough force to bend the steel sign post. Also, notice that the concrete bench was being pushed inland; it was only stopped by the concrete block at the head of the parking space, which is fastened to the ground.

Here’s a big chunk of the seawall that has been tossed into the parking lot.

An entire tree left in the parking lot just behind the rock jetty. The rock jetty appeared entirely unscathed, by the way.

Conrete benches overturned.

A solid, concrete block was tossed about 6 feet from its original location at the head of a parking space.

The public parking lot from the western end… completely reduced to rubble.

Further down the beach, a deck is snapped in half. Towards Pilot’s Point, where numerous cottages sit directly on the waterfront, waves certainly made direct, forceful contact with structures. Many were flooded and suffered damage, but none collapsed.

Close to the Pilot’s Point entrance, there was still 1 to 2 feet of standing water.

A jellyfish that was left on the sidewalk after the surge withdrew.