Beaches up and down the Island took a beating on Jan. 9 as a storm rolled through the Southern Ocean County area. Parts of Long Beach Boulevard from Ship Bottom to Beach Haven were impassable due to tidal flooding.
Surveying the scene on Jan. 10, Harvey Cedars Borough Commissioner Joseph Gieger said, “When we get these storms, it’s usually the south end (in Harvey Cedars) that suffers erosion and that was the case again. The dunes didn’t get breached, but some street ends have 8- to 10-foot drops.”
Gieger, who is public works commissioner, said beaches affected included Mercer, Salem, Middlesex, Hudson, and Atlantic avenues. “Hopefully soon, some of the sand we lost will wash back in,” he said. “For now there’s nothing we can really do.”
Police Chief Robert Burnaford, who is the emergency management coordinator, said the highest gust recorded during the storm was 45 mph at 11 p.m. “The worst part of the storm was at night. After midnight things started to calm down.” He said there were no power outages or reports of homes sustaining wind damage.
“Some streets by the bay got flooded,” said Burnaford. “Two street signs got knocked down.”
Gieger and other officials were bracing themselves for possibly more damage as another storm was expected to strike late Friday into Saturday morning.
“It was windy and rainy, but thankfully, it wasn’t as bad,” he said.
Eric Hoeflich, meteorologist from the National Weather Service office in Mt. Holly, said Tuesday’s storm brought gusts of 60 mph in Beach Haven and 62 mph in Tuckerton.
“On Saturday morning, we got a reading of 53 mph,” said Hoeflich. “Other than that, the highest average gusts up and down the coast were in the 40s.”
Chris Carson, Beach Haven Public Works superintendent, said numerous beaches on the central and southern ends suffered erosion.
He added that he and officials recently met with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Army Corps of Engineers.
“They are just getting ready to go out to bid for the beach replenishment first repair cycle,” he said. “We are going to start pushing sand probably towards the end of February ourselves in case the replenishment doesn’t start before summer.”
Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini said the beaches throughout the municipality got “hit bad” by the recent storm.
“There’s cliffs all over the places, up and down the Island,” the mayor remarked.
As the mayor also noted, the township is hopeful that bids for another round of beach replenishment will take place this summer, which would likely mean the project could start around October. Holgate is on the docket for more sand, and Mancini said some northern sections of the Island could use re-nourishment as well.
Source: The SandPaper: Area Beaches Take a Battering from Recent Storm