On the Beach and on the Streets
The unusual November storm that started out as Tropical Storm Ida is no more. The remnants, a large low-pressure system off the South Atlantic coast, ran up against a strong northern high-pressure system on the way up the coast. This very big and windy storm is now officially a Nor’easter.
Front-end loaders were working on the beach, just off the Boardwalk in the historic downtown part of Ocean City, Maryland. This machine is working along a line of sand fences at North Division Street. High surf is in the background.
This lonely machine behind some small sand dunes at the south end of the Ocean City beach looks almost like a ship at sea. I couldn’t figure out exactly what the front-end loaders were doing. They were moving sand, presumably positioning it to resist the big, pounding waves that will continue all night and all day Friday and Saturday. Most of these photos were taken between 3 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. Thursday afternoon, right around high tide. The light was fading, and the rain was heavy, so the quality of the photos is not so good. This is the bleakest of the pictures, so I thought I’d get it out of the way now.
You are now entering the Maryland Coastal Bays Watershed. Anything can happen. Please fasten your life preservers. (This photo on Route 50 near Berlin was taken months ago, but I couldn’t resist inserting it here.)
Philadelphia Avenue flooded.
Police had Philadelphia Avenue closed from the Route 50 Bridge south to the Inlet on Thursday afternoon. City buses, big enough to handle the water, were allowed to pass. Philadelphia Avenue and St. Louis Avenue south of the bridge (which enters town at North Division St.) were flooded by the time I departed the island at 4:20 p.m. Ditto for the side streets between Philadelphia Avenue and the bay in the south end of town.
Route 50 Bridge entering Ocean City, Maryland
You can see that by this time, about 4 p.m. Thursday, part of the intersection at Philadelphia Avenue and North Division Street is covered with water.
Here they come. You can see the amount of water splashed up by the red minivan. Some of the folks are returning home from work, or maybe even going to work. But I suspect most of them are sightseers.
This is the Inlet Parking Lot at the very south end of Ocean City. The beach is very wide here, where sand has been building up behind a huge stone jetty since the inlet was cut in 1933. You can see the surf running unusually high up the beach. Half of the parking lot was covered with water.
Another shot of the water on the vast Inlet Parking Lot, which of course is closed to the public. Walking across the lot Thursday afternoon, with the wind and driving rain coming north to south, I had a momentary thought that I could be blown into the Inlet. With that in mind, I retreated from the parking lot.
Now here’s a shot of the Inlet Thursday afternoon, at the entrance to the parking lot. This is as close as I got to the water. I took this shot from the back porch of the Ocean City Lifesaving Museum, secure in the belief that the porch railing would keep me from being blown out to sea.
A small tree on the Boardwalk suffers the gale. A front-end loader works on the beach just north of the amusement pier.
Are we almost done? Here’s your last photo of a machine working on the Ocean City Beach.
I’ve heard that Ocean City has already suffered a good bit of beach erosion in this Nor’easter, a storm that is in no hurry to depart. Reports are that beach erosion has been significant at Virginia Beach and along the Carolina coast. And the Delaware beaches to the north are getting hammered just as hard.
In a more optimistic frame of mind, I’ll leave you with this photo of what the beach and ocean and sky USUALLY look like in Ocean City, Maryland, during the winter months.
– John Hayden
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2 Comments
November 13, 2009 at 8:57 am
So sad, thanks for sharing, we have a beach place on 13th and St. Louis. We just love coming to Ocean City.
November 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Thanks for sharing the photos, it let’s the home owners know how things are going. We have a house in Montego Bay. And hope to be there saturday to check it out.