Shoreline Battered By Wild Winds, Waves And Tides

by Alan Pollock

            By any measure, there has been some wild weather lately.  A series of coastal storms have brought high winds and towering seas, coinciding with high astronomical tides.

            Ocean swells of 15 to 20 feet crashed on the outer beach for several straight days, and an almost seismic rumble could be heard throughout Chatham as a result.  From the mainland, the waves could be seen exploding behind the camps on North Beach Island.

Breakers in Pleasant Bay, topping high tides, inundated Cotchpinicut town landing Monday morning.

          Chatham Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon said it appears the surf washed over the beach in several areas, swirling around and under the camps.  “It's starting to get a little sobering, looking at the length of the northern tip without any dune system to speak of,” he said.  If the camps had not been on pilings, “it would have been a much different situation.”

            In Pleasant Bay, where abnormally high tides are becoming the norm because of the new inlet, the surf accelerated erosion at several North Chatham town landings.  The surf undermined and toppled the concrete jersey barriers at Scatteree, and on Tuesday, town officials were at the landing removing truckloads of broken pavement.  The pavement was cut back somewhat and the barriers were erected again to provide some protection against the next storm, but the erosion is likely to continue, Keon said.  Similar erosion is taking place at Cotchpinicut.

            On Friday, surf pounded near the edge of Route 28 in South Orleans, causing part of the highway berm to collapse into the water, just a foot or so from the pavement.  It appears the bay washed over the highway in several locations.  Ryder's Cove Boatyard was under water, and a wind-driven tide washed through a neighborhood on Nickerson Neck, flooding Eastward Road to a depth of around a foot.  Scatteree Road and Old Wharf Road were also flooded at high tide.

            The same storm caused flooding on the Nantucket Sound shoreline, as well.  The parking lot at Old Mill Boat Yard was submerged, as were portions of Champlain and Battlefield Road in Chatham, and the parking lot at Hardings Beach was flooded.  In Harwich, Harbormaster Thomas Leach reported flooding at the town pier, with water up to the third shanty in the parking lot.  The bulkhead at Saquatucket Harbor was awash, and at Bank Street Beach, the tide came halfway to the parking lot. 

            Official wind reports during the storm had gusts of over 60 miles an hour in several locations around the region, wind speeds around the Lower Cape were generally lower—with one key exception.  The anemometer at Saquatucket Harbor Marina registered winds in excess of 100 mph for a period of about 90 minutes late last Thursday night.  The wind speeds reached that level at 10:18 p.m., peaking at 105mph at 10:58 p.m. and subsiding shortly before midnight.  Leach said the numbers are hard to believe, but the instrument is very accurate and was professionally installed.

            “There's no reason for me to believe that we didn't have that kind of wind that night,” he said.  A neighbor on Hoyt Road told Leach that he observed frighteningly strong winds at that hour, and looked outside to see his lawn furniture blowing around.  Another weather station about one-third of a mile away registered winds of 65 mph.

3/4/10