January 29, 2023

Report Details

It was a gorgeous sunny but quite cold afternoon, with a brisk wind from the northeast blowing sand toward the surf across a wide low-tide beach. I could not get to the beach at first, due to tons of logs piled up at the north end of my mile and blocking the mouth of the path leading to the beach from the Nadonna parking lot. Since I last had been to this beach in December, tons of logs had been washed in by the three sets of King Tides, especially up by the jetty. The path is now completely cut off and there’s no way that people are going to be able to remove these giant logs by hand. Heavy equipment will be required. The entire “inner beach” area that had been created last year between new logs brought in by King Tides and the already existing massive log graveyard area, has now been filled up with new log debris. Lots of logs were newly perched on top of the east end of the jetty as well. I tried a couple of side trails but could not get thru the logs safely to the beach.I drove down to the south end of my mile and there the path to the beach was wide open and clear. On the beach here only a few logs had washed in here or there, and I didn’t notice any logs that had been pushed over the top of the dunes, as happened with last year’s more violent King Tides. The dunes at the south end of the mile are sliced steeply. They are several feet high at the beach and it would be difficult to escape a sneaker wave.A couple dozen people and half as many dogs were out enjoying a walk on the clean-swept beach on this sunny but chilly day. A fisherman was walking out across the top of the jetty, pole in hand. A couple with a young child had built the starting layer of a new “fort” up near the jetty. Their little girl was upset that all the many old forts were gone, washed away by King Tides, so her parents started building a new one. No doubt by the end of the summer there’ll be many more forts. My most important observation is that this year’s King Tides had really brought in tons of logs up near the jetty and pushed them far up against the dunes.