Beach Trail

[JohnR]

Anyone see the beach trail to WH in the past couple days? Tried to go out last night and the sand was GONE. Nothing left but bowling ball sized rocks - 10 pin and candlepin, and a lot of concrete blocks (several hundred pounds each) blocking the track out. The sand seemed to have been pushed west. The water seems to have gone over the top of the dune and into the wetlands behind....

[chris L]

yeah I noticed that too last night .

[tattoobob]

Up north here our beach is closed maybe until next year

[SeaWolf]

john, that's typical for east beach at watch hill after a good storm. those boulders and cement foundation always comes up. but, the erosion in other areas downw the coast in ri is not typical. the best took a very, very hard beating. some areas may not return to their original look for years.

[RIROCKHOUND]

Some of it is typical, some is not, certain areas will set up as 'erosion zones' in the late 70's areas east of the C-Town Breachway suffered severe erosion (as did most beaches with the bliz of 78)
Currently, a large erosion zone exists in the vacinity of SK Town beach and Carpanters Beach; take a look and you'll see what I mean

East of the Charlestown breach faired well, in part due to the large volume of sand added to the system during the winter/spring dredge-dumping

This was an odd storm; not overly powerful, but the slow to no movement of it coupled with many high tides with a storm surge (20-40cm, not huge by any means but it has an impact) made it pretty erosional in most places, along with the huge long period swells.

Generally the 5 factors that influence coastal erosion are:
Storm intensity
Duration
Tidal Cycle
time between storms
path or storm track
(Hayes and Boothroyd, 1969)

This guy had two of these for SE New England, Duration and tidal cycle (spring tides) and if it had sat west of us, we would have had SE winds and even bigger, shorter period swells...
I sense it's gonna be a long winter for coastal home owners, just a gut feeling...

[stripercrazy]

john, there's 4 ways to get on the beach there, I can remember the names of the roads but the last ones in watch hill near the hotel. RIMS closed down the back road to the middle breachway and east beach sand trail was under water and washed out, be careful at high tide it was going right over the dunes.ed

[MakoMike]

I heard a rumor that three houses fell into the water in Matunuck, near Carpenters. True?

[RIROCKHOUND]

Mike;
Entirely possible, I've been swamped, so I've really just been concerned with our research sites (SK-town beach, 2 in Charlestown and 2 in Misquamicut) I havent had time to take my usual full coastal survey;
The parking lot/road at the south end of Carpenters (the beach houses) is pretty well trashed, some of that started last year. It wouldnt surprise me if a couple of the seaward houses went away. I also havent been down by the Mist, but heard the deck there and Joyces was still standing....
The biggest concern is the elevated boardwalk in South Kingstown, it is hanging by on the skin of it's teeth....

[rockyroady]

cruised east beach at watch hill yesterday and looked OK. rough driving @ east end but beach's character different.