While Florida was being hit by Hurricane Ian, the states in the Northeast were getting hit with something else.
For six days the states of New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania were getting hit with a Low pressure that just wouldn’t go away.This low pleasure brought in the rain, wind, and in most coastal communities, flooding.
North Wildwood Beach Erosion Tour 2022
In the Wildwoods, areas closest to the bays were getting flood waters up to eleven inches. This went on for three before the water receded.
While the back bays were getting flooded the beaches were completely underwater due to the ocean surge. In North Wildwood some of the sand dunes were torn in half. This had caused some pathways to the North Wildwood beaches impassable.
Why did this happen? Let’s break down what caused this and its aftermath. [At the bottom of this article is a video tour of the beach erosion in North Wildwood]
To start things off the wind speeds across our area were getting wind gusts up to 40 miles-per-hour including 42 miles per hour in Cape May, New Jersey, and 35 miles per hour in Newark. As you moved inland the speeds tended to be not as bad.
It wasn’t just the wind speed that mattered in this storm but also the direction of the wind. There was a low-pressure coastal storm sitting off our coast for several days. This was causing the wind to swing up and push up against our barrier islands.
When this happens for an extended period of time, it shoved the water toward the beaches and bays. This water has to go somewhere so this is where we see the swells eating up our sand dunes and water in the back bays rises to a point where they push over older bulkheads.
The bulkheads only succumbed to the rising water during the high tides.
Lucky for us, the second the tides went down the water went down with it.
Why this storm stuck around is another question. While the low pressure was off our coast, there was high pressure up by the Great Lakes. This high pressure made it very hard for the low pressure to move out of our area.
When the storms finally left this past Thursday we were left with some heavy erosion on the beach. In North Wildwood, the dunes from 10th street to 16th street were cut in half.
While most of North Wildwood has a bulkhead on its beach, 12th through 26th does not. The North Wildwood lifeguard headquarters is located on one of these blocks without a bulkhead. Its only protection was the sand dune which is now in half. To protect it the city installed concrete barriers.
On Saturday, October 8th we visited the area to give you a tour of the power of the storm.
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Check out these other wildwood videos and articles.
