cache sniper 1715
Tenderfoot
Well so far I have only seen one report of Florida wreck coins found during this wind event. Now I know that more postings would be here if things were being found out there so it got me thinking more...
I was able to devote a good amount of time to observe the latest coastal wind event and from my observations, a cursory examination of webcams, and reports to my weather office it looks like we escaped this episode relatively unscathed from an erosion standpoint. Conventional wisdom using past events with a long duration of strong onshore component flow and large waves would argue that we should have had more erosion than what actually occurred; however, there were some subtle observed differences that may have kept the erosion minimized. The first thing that was different about this episode seems to have been the angle of incidence of wind and fetch generation area. Instead of a traditional "Nor'easter" which has winds on the order of 030-050 azimuth the winds in this case were mainly from 050-060 during the event. This small azimuthal difference lessened the effects of Eckman turning of the swell component resulting in more onshore directing of wave energy (almost perpendicular to the coast.) With coastal orientation from about 340-160 azimuth and this direct onshore focusing of wave energy I did not observe any significant waveform appearing "cuts" on the beach which one more commonly sees in the more traditional nor'easter events as wave energy focused downstream in the surf zone produces a wave like appearance to the beach. What dune erosion I did see was minor undercutting of the dune base in areas of narrower beachfronts. More disturbing than the erosion was the significant number of turtle nests that became exposed. As the turtles in most cases lay their eggs just below the base of the dune.
These are my opinions only
Comments, observations welcome
Best wishes John
I was able to devote a good amount of time to observe the latest coastal wind event and from my observations, a cursory examination of webcams, and reports to my weather office it looks like we escaped this episode relatively unscathed from an erosion standpoint. Conventional wisdom using past events with a long duration of strong onshore component flow and large waves would argue that we should have had more erosion than what actually occurred; however, there were some subtle observed differences that may have kept the erosion minimized. The first thing that was different about this episode seems to have been the angle of incidence of wind and fetch generation area. Instead of a traditional "Nor'easter" which has winds on the order of 030-050 azimuth the winds in this case were mainly from 050-060 during the event. This small azimuthal difference lessened the effects of Eckman turning of the swell component resulting in more onshore directing of wave energy (almost perpendicular to the coast.) With coastal orientation from about 340-160 azimuth and this direct onshore focusing of wave energy I did not observe any significant waveform appearing "cuts" on the beach which one more commonly sees in the more traditional nor'easter events as wave energy focused downstream in the surf zone produces a wave like appearance to the beach. What dune erosion I did see was minor undercutting of the dune base in areas of narrower beachfronts. More disturbing than the erosion was the significant number of turtle nests that became exposed. As the turtles in most cases lay their eggs just below the base of the dune.
These are my opinions only
Comments, observations welcome
Best wishes John
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But there is some "knowledge" that can be gleened from their comments. Some stretches of beah that are angled a bit from the regular north / south coastline may have some erosion that doesn't normally exist from a standard nor'easter, no? The south shore of the cape, which is normally protected from a nor'easter, would probably have seen the same type of erosion typical of other beaches in typical nor'easters.
