I’ll give it a name …. I’m-tired-of-this-damn-wind-already !!! The storm with no name is like the energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going. There has been some serious damage in some areas to beach front properties. Bowers Beach has water to the houses, so does big Stone beach. Any of the Delaware Bay Beach towns with small beaches are taking a beating. There is even a small breach at South Bowers Beach, but it is not serious. The marsh has to drain somehow and always finds a way. Inland some trees have fallen into a few houses and trailers. In Tall Pines a Trailer was cut in half, no one was in the trailer at the time. In fact hardly anyone is at the campground. The low lying areas are still flooded and will continue to see this issue at each high tide. Some of the water is leaving, but enough stays behind to flood the area again. It is slacking off a bit and yesterday seems to have been the worst. People are dealing with the flooding in their own ways, and some are having fun and others are just down right miserable. If you have lived here your whole life, or long enough, you know this is part of living on the coast. We deal with it and try to have fun with it or stay out of the way of emergency crews and not become a statistic.
As much fun as it is to play in the water it can be dangerous. Last night DNREC and the USCG were searching for man from the Love Creek area that jumped into a kayak to chase down his sailboat that broke from its moorings. Not a smart thing to do, for many reasons. This morning they resumed the search and found him with his sailboat in the marsh. If you can imagine what it is like to run after a moving car imagine trying to chase down a sailboat in 40 MPH gusting winds in a kayak. Even without the sails deployed that boat had to be moving fast. The fact that many people had to put their lives at risk to look for this gentlemen always worries me. People do not think that when they get jammed up they will need help. I doubt a boat is worth your life or the lives of others, just let it go. If you are out and about playing in the water stay out of the water ways. The SUV that wound up in the bay at Rehoboth Shores could have avoided that had the driver noticed the boat moored at a pier not sixty feet away from him. Be careful and be smart when driving through water. I understand sometimes you have to do what you have to do, but deep water will stall a car, and swift currents can push you right off the road. Turn around don’t drown, if you really need to get somewhere for an emergency, decide if it is worth calling 911 first.
Ocean City took a hit at the boardwalk there is enough sand piled on and up to the boardwalk to build a series of dunes. They have been taking a huge hit at the low beach by the inlet since the storm started. Robyn Phillips Photography took some great photos. The first day of the storm with no name, crews were there pushing sand around to block water flowing by the inlet jetty. I remember after Sandy the inlet filled in by the jetty with so much sand that it was a beach at low tide. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Delaware’s beaches are seriously carved up and have lost a lot of sand, but the dunes have held strong! Some of Bethany beach’s jetties are exposed and they haven’t seen the light of day in over ten years. The pylons at 3Rs most likely will be exposed for a good 8 feet then after a few weeks the sand will build back up. In the mean time we will have beaches that break like New Jersey or Assateague long and flat, but unfortnately with little space between the dunes. We had that before the storm hit, hence the water being a foot deep to the dunes in some places. I am sure there are some crazy deep tide pool holes on Fenwick Island State Park beach. That always carves out and after Sandy there were small deep “ponds” on the surfs edge that eventually filled with sand. The point was carved up from the winds last week and water has been flowing into the dunes where it breached during Superstorm Sandy. We will keep you updated and as always … lemonade kids, lemonade. It is all you can do in these no name storms.
Fish On!!
Rich King