Did anyone in Ocean Grove really sleep last night? Every hour or so, one of us got up and went downstairs checking the basin and pail for overflow, looking out the front door to see if Broadway was a road or a lake, then stumbling back up the stairs to bed for another hour of sleep.
Sunday morning dawned and we cautiously looked outside to see if there was any damage to the front of the house and if there was a layer of sand on Broadway indicating the storm surge actually breeched the dunes, the boardwalk, Ocean Avenue and rushed down the road to us. Thank God, NO!
After opening up the doors and pushing the storm windows up and bringing the screen back down, my thoughts turned to the shore. “Let’s go see what happened at the beach”. By the time we got to the Boardwalk, it was already highly populated with fellow survivalists who like us wanted to see what happened at the source.
Shocked and suprised, we found an intact boardwalk but some heavily damaged dunes. There was less sand on the boardwalk than there was after last winter’s Nor’Easter. But the concrete benches were pushed away from the railings like so many pawns in Mother Nature’s chess game. There was a salt water pond between the dunes and the boardwalk which looked to stretch from the Broadway beach entrance to the Beach Office. Peter and I walked to the Fishing Pier which still had police tape across it, where a large group of people had gathered. A utility shed had been torn off its base and now rested up against the boardwalk. Then we walked onto the beach at the South End entrance to get a closer look at the angry foaming sea. I noticed that I only walked down two steps and I was on the sand – that stair-case has a least 6 steps!!!!
The beach was very small and the shore line significantly closer. Hopefully the tides will revert to their normal height over the next couple of days.
- Mother Nature re-arranged the furniture
- Dune Fence Uprooted
- Ravaged By Irene
- Irene’s Foot Bath Behind the Dunes
- And Where Are The Other 4 Steps?
Storm-surged Shed
The Angry Sea Foams at the Mouth
All photos taken by me.
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
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