Food for thought:

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/globe1.jpg]
Hull Beach

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/globe9.jpg]
Gunrock - Hull

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/globe10.jpg]
Chatham

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/globe13.jpg]
Race Point

I saw these on Boston.com and figured they were worth a look...

JohnR, those are some awesome shots, sad to see the damage mother nature can cause. Hows the weather down your way? We have about 12 inches so far and its still snowing like a mother, I guess we are supposed to get another 6 tonight. I can't take it I need the sping and the Stripers NOW!!!!!!

Uggghhhh, those folks are bummin'. I wonder what happened to the two boats that were under the two on the rack??? If I were that guy I'd lash those two off.

That's nothing. I was living in Scituate during the 78 blizzard and had to walk to the harbor because the roads weren't plowed on my street until Thursday following that Friday storm. I'll have to dig through my old photo albums, because I've got some great pitures of big dump trucks burried in sand right up to the tops of their wheels. I've got pictures of houses sitting on top of cars, boats in the middle of downtown Scituate Harbor, the scene was just unreal along the coast. This storm doesn't even come close, although I could be wrong, since I've yet to talk to my friend from Scituate on the damage situation.

Just be glad you don't own ocean front property, because eventually the ocean reclaims what it wants. Insurance might pay for you to be relocated, but it can't replace tons and tons of sand and property. Tight lines.

FW, Mostly freezing rain, some snow but moslty flakes of slush or runny snow flakes... BTW, I think that first pic is just south of Tody Rocks between that little causeway and the High School, a few houses to the right of that small parking lot. The scary thing is that wall, which you can barely see in front of the person's deck is about 6 to 8 feet over the high tide mark. That surf is coming right over it! I've fished in front of that house before a few times last year on the little spit that runs out there.

GS, you're right. Nothing like Scituate - I've seen some of the pictures but I wasn't around for that storm.

Here are some from the front page of Boston.com both from Scituate in 1978

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/blizzard14.jpg]

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/blizzard15.jpg]

While I'm at it, here are some links to http://www.hazegray.com , an excellent website for maritime history focusing on the worlds Naval fleets. But thay have an excellent set on The Portland Gale of the 19th Century... http://www.hazegray.org/features/1898gale/

This picture is from very close to where that house in the first picture is...

[img=http://www.hazegray.org/features/1898gale/gale06a.jpg]

Will be interesting to see what erosion occurred at the beaches I fish. That picture of Race Point isn't all that enlightening as far as showing how bad it is......I just hope it's not a repeat of last year where a big chunk of the beach was closed through July.

Every time these things come through it changes the beach for fishing the following year...makes it fun to try to read the new beach in the spring. And there's always the potential for a major change like Chatham breaking through ten years ago.

Guess we'll all know what the situation is sometime tomorrow after the morning high tide.

Shh John don"t talk about fishing in that spot or posting pictures of my other spots. Those are "secrets"! Looks like a trip for clams and lobsters at Nantasket might be in order.

CRATT - I was biting my lip too. That's why I didn't add anything. Now people will really examine closely :o ... but the info is, uh, not where they might think it would, umm, be...

I figured we worked some of the same spots...

...Some more from the storm from the Boston Herald:

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/starfish.gif]

"...picks through starfish to find lobsters in a washed-up pile in front of his Winthrop home, a quarter-mile from the beach"
Here is the link to the story: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/klem03082001.htm

...And Scituate is still under water in some areas, and we thought it wasn't too bad...

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/row.gif]

Story: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/sout03082001.htm

I dont think I can stand to see more of my favorite spot being taken away! (Race Point) Last year wasnt very much fun, it made me really sad to look at pictures of family vacations there fron twenty years ago compared to what I see now!!!! Or last year heading out to mission bell and hardly being able to drive the whole lenght.... :(
I also remember when High Head was our destination of choice (lots of beach and no one there!) If you have been there in the past years you know that it is hardly accsessible now........

Jenn--I get the same sad feelings when I go to the Vineyard and see the remains of Wasque, compared to the place it was 10 years ago. People who think the rip is a big deal now should have seen it when you needed a 4 oz bucktail to bounce the bottom on a moon tide.

But, things have a way of recycling, what Nature takes away today, it gives back sometime down the road. Just have to hope that the "sometime" is within our lifetime.

I bet there isn't too much left of that corner of MV after this storm. Wasque might be a "walk-in" deal again to fish the rip proper.

Wasque is not far from having the rip inside the pond and lagoon. It didn't happen this time but we might not be lucky the next time. Here is what I found on it... From the MV Times: http://www.mvtimes.com/online_folder/news6.htm


Norton Point Beach Link to Chappaquid#^&#^&#^&#^& Often Breached

By Matthew Pelikan

Despite predictions that a breach appears imminent, Norton Point Beach, the strip of marsh, dunes, and sand that connects Katama with Wasque, withstood this week's pounding high tides.
But that does not mean that history will not repeat, allowing the waters of Katama Bay to flow into the ocean.
The likely site of the breach, toward the eastern (Wasque) end of the beach, is visible from the Edgartown side of the bay as a notch in the dune line, above a sandy spillway stripped of vegetation by seawater washing into Katama Bay during recent storms.
While coastal erosion is a fact of life on the Vineyard, we don't often face a geographic change of this magnitude: a cut in Norton Point would sever the only land link between Chappaquid#^&#^&#^&#^& and the Vineyard proper, and it would radically alter the flow of water through Katama Bay and perhaps Edgartown harbor. To some observers, the prospect of such an exercise by the forces of nature is proving to have an irresistible allure.
You can bet that those who fish are paying attention: a Norton Point cut would complicate access to Chappy fishing hotspots, but tidal flow in and out of the cut would assuredly attract both the noble bluefish and the even more noble striped bass. Astute birders and clammers are paying attention, since changes in tides, currents, and sediments would affect their quarry in Katama Bay.
And folks interested in coastal dynamics are simply captivated by a chance to study a rare geological event. Dukes County biologist and beach manager Rob Culbert has been eagerly assembling precise GPS (global positioning system) survey data and collaborating with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists to install measuring devices that will record the tidal conditions when or if a break occurs.
Yesterday, Mr. Culbert said it is remarkable that the beach did not give way to the forces of wind, high tides, and pounding surf. He said while a breach is expected, the exact set of conditions that would cause one is not exactly known.
Many Vineyarders take for granted the presence of an unbroken beach between Katama and Wasque. Historically, though, this situation is the exception rather than the rule. According to historian Charles Edward Banks, whose three-volume, 1911-vintage "History of Martha's Vineyard" is still a valuable and delightful resource, the name of Chappaquid#^&#^&#^&#^& probably derives from a Wampanoag name meaning "separated island" - linguistic evidence that Native Americans, with their 10,000-year perspective on the situation, regarded absence of a land link as the normal condition.
And looking even farther back, geologists suspect that Katama Bay was totally open at its southern end when rising sea levels first cut the Vineyard off from the mainland. The beach that spans the gap was created by the sea itself, after glacial processes had formed most of the Island.
Once established, though, what is now called Norton Point Beach has experienced a lively history. Like any barrier beach, it is a dynamic structure, shifting in size and location as prodigious volumes of sand wash around on the sea floor. Not until 1792 did the beach finally close for the first time in recorded history - a circumstance that was reversed within a few months. At times, it appears, openings existed simultaneously at Wasque and at Katama, leaving a barrier island in the middle; perhaps more generally, a single opening existed at the Wasque end, due to the tendency for openings to migrate east under the influence of prevailing currents. (This configuration is shown in a 1795 survey map that has been widely reproduced in Vineyard histories.) Despite today's link between Katama and Wasque, the history of a broken beach persists in a wide range of forms: look, for example, at the Vineyard map that adorns the back cover of your Verizon telephone directory.


Coninued below...

Continued from above....

If or when a breach does occur, according to beach manager Culbert, it will probably be during a strong northeasterly gale. This may seem counterintuitive, since such a wind puts Norton Point in the lee. But the mechanism of a breach is not expected to be the pounding of the Atlantic surf on the South Shore; rather, water packed into the bay by the combination of a high tide at Edgartown and a northeast wind will burst through to the open ocean.
It is said that a northeast storm opened up the beach about six months after it first closed in 1792. Over a century and a half later, the actual process was observed at alarmingly close range by J. Gordon "Pete" Ogden 3rd, during an intense storm on Aug. 31, 1954 (a good summary of his account appears in Anne Hale's "Moraine to Marsh: A Field Guide to Martha's Vineyard"): Pounding waves had thinned the beach to only 50#^&75 feet, and a combination of tide and storm surge had jacked the Katama Bay water level well above that of the ocean outside. Under the Katama Bay pressure-head, underlying sand went "quick," flowing outward as slurry. The beach collapsed, and within hours the ensuing gush of water had scoured out a 300-yard opening. Under sunny skies the next day, Ogden reported, the breach looked as if it had always been there. To read of such a cataclysm is to understand that Mr. Culbert had public safety in mind when he announced the possibility of a breach: anyone caught in quicksand, the beach collapse, or the resulting violent erosion would be in deep, deep trouble.
Mr. Culbert emphasizes that there is no certainty a breach will occur, by this mechanism or any other. Basically, he says, a short stretch of beach has been subject to unusually fast erosion: "We've lost 200 to 300 feet there since December 1999," he says. What caused this acceleration is uncertain, but it is likely that a gap in an offshore sand bar has allowed ocean waves to smack the beach here unimpeded. A quarter-mile or so of beach has run out ahead of the more gradual northward march of the beach as a whole, finally cutting into the dunes that form the backbone of Norton Point. Mr. Culbert says that the inside and outside high tide lines are currently just 100#^&120 feet apart at this point, making a replay of the 1954 breach seem just one strong nor'easter away.
From the scientist's perspective, part of the fun is trying to predict what will happen, and Mr. Culbert clearly relishes analyzing the situation. One factor working against a breach, he speculates, may be the historical reduction in the size of Katama Bay. Accumulating sediments, including a load dumped into Mattakesett Bay (near the end of the "Left Fork") during a short-lived breach in the early 1980s, have gradually filled shallow fringes of the bay. Moreover, the northward progress of the beach has whittled away at the bay, which is shaped like a funnel with its wide end to the south. Mr. Culbert wonders whether the bay can hold a volume of water sufficient to generate the forces needed for a breach. If it cannot, then the era of Chappy as the "separated island" might be over for good.
If even the likelihood of a breach is up for discussion, the consequences of a breach are necessarily the subject of even more tenuous speculation. The right wind and current conditions could presumably close the breach almost immediately, leaving little in the way of long-term effects. On the other hand, a wide breach that persisted for decades would substantially alter the flow of water through the bay, with unpredictable but potentially enormous effects on the area's ecology.
Tides on the north and south shores of Edgartown are out of phase: high tide at Eel Pond falls some two hours from low tide at Norton Point. With the barrier beach intact, Katama Bay fills and drains through its single opening at Edgartown harbor, breathing with the rhythm of the Nantucket Sound tide cycle. With a cut in the barrier beach, however, the bay would be filling from the high-tide end as it drained at the low-tide end; the result would be a current through the bay, changing directions four times a day. The tide might be rising or falling at both ends simultaneously for a brief period during each tidal cycle, with results difficult to predict. Stronger currents might move more sediment than the present-day tidal flow, deepening channels and scouring shallow portions of the bay, and tidal flow might carve a hole or trench in the sea floor outside opening.
Whatever the details, increased water flow in Katama Bay could have significant consequences for wildlife. More thorough flushing would probably improve the water quality in the bay, fostering populations of clams and scallops. Nesting and migrating shorebirds, gulls, and terns, and the sea ducks that winter in the region, all stand to gain or lose, depending on how their foraging habitat and prey populations are altered. Finfish would congregate around the beach opening, as they do when the great ponds are opened to the sea, and one can easily imagine pirate fleets of bluefish gnashing their way straight through from the Atlantic to Edgartown and back again.
If Norton Point is breached, the event will receive far more scientific scrutiny than has any previous such occurrence. But it's a sure thing that following every major change in Norton Point Beach, Vineyarders have rapidly developed an unscientific but thoroughly practical grasp of how the bay's ecology has responded. This is a kind of knowledge, though, that tends to be acquired by personal experience, spread by the spoken word, and recorded mainly in the memory of those whom it affects. Perhaps that's why the possibility of a breach is so fascinating: in a community closely linked to the sea, a lot of people just think it would be fun to see what happens.

[/quote]



Original reply from Fisherwoman at 10am 3/10/01



Great article JohnR, But I really don't want to see that happen, otherwise our early trips to Wasque will be eliminated, not a good thing when the albies are around and the Chappy ferry doesn't run till 7:00 AM. Not good news for shore, we have seen that beach disipate dramatically in the last 5 years, hope it holds out for another fine year of fishing.

I liked that info too. And I'm glad it's still there after the storm but from reading it, there aren't many storms left before that point is majorly changed again. We probably won't see it back to what we condider normal in our lifetime... It could be hundreds of years if it ever changes to something that looks like it was just 5-10 years ago...