Pre-Storm Primer Thread

[bigscoop]

Trent was asking about this so I thought I'd start a thread concerning these storms so these new hunters will have a better idea of what to expect and how different storms can produce drastically different results. It's an overwhelming feeling sometimes to walk excitedly onto a big post-storm beach only to say, "Now what?" So anyone with any advice or pointers for these guys please feel free to chime in.

PS: I'll write up something on what little I know on the topic and post it a bit later.

 

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[bigscoop]

Storm systems. At some point this summer and fall it is likely that one or more of these systems will effect your area beaches, just how much largely depending on the strength, direction of the swells, and the duration of the system. Now let me say first that I have only lived on the east coast of Florida for four years and that I have yet to experience the full effects of a major storm system. However, I have experienced the effects of those typical storm systems that seem to come a few times each season. So the following is what I know about the effects of these systems as they pertain to my area beaches.


First, my area beaches are above the cape and they are further away from the gulf stream then those beaches south of the cape. As a result there is a larger expanse of sand bars off my coast then those in the south and my beaches are also typically flatter and wider. I think this holds pretty much true until you get much further south. Just pointing out that not all beaches are laid the same and so it is quite possible that my beaches might see very little erosion while those further south see a great deal. Anyway, here we go.


The three biggest factors that will determine just how much erosion or reshaping a beach will see is angle of the attack, water volume/force, and the duration of the attack. Last year we had a storm system that lasted for a few days and things looked pretty promising until it finally settled down enough to go hunting, then not very promising at all. All it really did to my area beaches was to drag all the upper beach dry sand down onto the lower beach, beyond that it didn't do much at all. Why? Because it attacked the beach from straight on, no crosscutting action to dig into the flat beach and to redistribute the sand, no aggressive reshaping or stripping action at all.


On the other hand, a couple of years ago a fairly weak system attacked the beach for a couple of days and it created all kinds of cuts and low spots all up and down the beach and the hunting was quite good for several days afterwords. Why? Because it attacked the beach at a step angle which created a lot of crosscurrent and stripping and reshaping action. This storm system produced some fantastic hunting and for several days it was difficult to take more then a few steps with encountering another target.


What made the above storm system so great was not only the angle of attack but the water volume, duration, and force, the swells being something like 8 to 10 feet so not only did it do a lot of stripping but it also broke up those offshore bars and carried a lot of items onto the beach. It was the best of both worlds.


On the flip side, however, a few years ago we had a slow moving hurricane stalled way out in the Atlantic and for several days we had 6 to 8 foot swells coming onto the beach, straight in. When this storm finally subsided we had piles of weed and sand everywhere and the hunting absolutely sucked!


So here's my first suggestion, don't get too worked up over these storm systems until you can see what they're actually doing to your beaches.

 

[GatorBoy]

Here's a little tip ... Take photos if you can where you have found items in the past try to incorporate constant objects like existing trees in the photo.
I don't talk about it much but I look at my own photos for quite a bit.. it's amazing how much the beach changes and how quickly you can forget just where exactly you were when you found certain items or clusters of items.... I'm talking about old things that in my opinion have not moved all that much but the sand has moved over top of them and has now been moved again.

 

[Boatlode]

Here's a little tip ... Take photos if you can where you have found items in the past try to incorporate constant objects like existing trees in the photo.
I don't talk about it much but I look at my own photos for quite a bit.. it's amazing how much the beach changes and how quickly you can forget just where exactly you were when you found certain items or clusters of items.... I'm talking about old things that in my opinion have not moved all that much but the sand has moved over top of them and has now been moved again.

You are so right, GB. I still kick myself for not taking beach photos after Frances and Jeannie in 2004.

 

[GatorBoy]

They can be like a blueprint

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Big scoop, good post, and good inputs so far. I'm not on your coast, but I would imagine that it's similar ingredients that combine to create beach erosion, no matter east coast versus west coast. So here's my .02c drawn on many decades of storm chasing here:

Swells/surf/wave-heights, on-shore winds (off-shore is a bad omen to go against the direction you're hoping for), tides (the higher the tide, the better, to reach far back into high-dry dunes), and directions of all the above.

Whenever these ingredients all combine and are above the beach's acclimated norms, then erosion occurs.

With today's internet past-looking buoy and NOAA data records, you could tell, for example, that a southeasterly swell at such & such height, combined with such & such MPH SE winds, arriving at a tide height of such & such high tide, doesn't happen except for every 5 yrs, on average. That would make that event outside that beach's acclimated "norms".

 

[Trent67]

Thanks for starting this thread Bigscoop. I am a south Florida native and have spent my life near or on the beach but this hobby has opened my eyes to the ever changing conditions that occur there. I look at the beach/ ocean/weather in a different way now and want to learn as much as possible so I am ready to go when the conditions are right. Thanks again for starting this thread and to all who have posted. Very informative.

 

[Trent67]

They can be like a blueprint <img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=995985"/>

Cool picture GatorBoy. When and at what beach was this taken?

 

[GatorBoy]

Frederick Douglass beach looking south... In the 70's
I can't take credit for this photo I borrowed it from another thread here on treasurenet

 

[GatorBoy]

Same beach looking north.. 80's

 

[sponge]

Be cool to have a major time lapse video. Like twenty years worth. They will have that with all the cams nowdays.

 

[bigscoop]

I think it's also important to know your beaches, do your research so you know what lays offshore, where certain things have been found in the past, etc. Storms have a way of exposing that stuff and placing it within your reach sometimes.

Per example, on my area beaches there is a section of beach that will routinely produce "old" coins of various nationalities when the offshore bars are broken up and shoved onto the beach. I keep hoping for something other then coins but not yet. There are also a few places where past hunting has given me reason to suspect things of great interest may be buried in the deep sand offshore, these storms being my only real hope of finding out for sure.

I have several miles of beach mapped out, also have an entire Google Earth portfolio of this same region, all of it broken down into 1/4 miles zones and then each zone broken down into smaller sections just for when these storms do come. The opportunities are rare and they won't last long before the sand comes back in so you need to be ready to do some serious hunting and documenting when those rare opportunities do come.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Gatorboy, I wish I had pictures of what some of our CA beaches looked like during the 1982-83 storms, and then again in the 1997-98 storms. There were some beaches that had cuts to 10 ft. deep cliffs! Down to bedrock. Targets fast and furious at the bottom of those cuts. As fast as you could dig, multiple targets per basket. You'll never return to dry sand hunting again when you've been in conditions like that! haha

Other beaches here don't require as big as cuts. So certain more-protected beaches get down to silver coins with only ~3 ft. cuts like in your pix. Oddly, some of the more "active" beaches (those facing the open ocean that get routinely washed in and out annually) a 3 ft. cut would do absolutely nothing. So it just takes knowing the "norms" of the beach you are hunting.

 

[GatorBoy]

Same thing here look at the size of this cut and notice there's not a single layer of different material in it

 

[OBN]

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Same thing here look at the size of this cut and notice there's not a single layer of different material in it

View attachment 996328

aggghhhh, stop it gatorboy! Stop posting pix of those mouthwatering cuts ! You're giving my detector a hard-on! Doh!

 

[bigscoop]

There are areas on my beaches, and probably on most others as well, where the hard-pack is much shallower. I think it's good to know your winter beaches because this is when a lot of these places can be found, good to know when the storms cut them even deeper.

On the other hand, there are locations on these same beaches that get 4-6 feet of sand removed from them all the time in the winter and they are still mostly just sand. These places look good but seldom produce much of anything. These places are like big soft spots, always getting washed out and filled back in.