|
Here's an excerpt from
BREAKTHROUGH: THE STORY OF CHATHAM'S NORTH BEACH. It picks
up the story just as a powerful winter storm was about to knock a
permanent hole through the protective barrier of North Beach...
Breakthrough
Late in December 1986, a few early winter storms sent huge
whitecaps hurtling against North Beach’s outer shore. Observers
at the Chatham Lighthouse overlook could clearly see the roiling,
spewing breakers foaming above the low dune line like white icing
on a sandy cake. There were occasional washovers which flattened
vegetation and swept away dunes, but they were temporary. When the
sky cleared and seas calmed, the beach remained more or less
unscathed.
Later, the winter turned into the worst of the
decade, perhaps in half a century. More than 40 inches of snow
fell, and the Cape, especially the outer Cape, shut down
completely for days at a time. Most of the effects were, however,
temporary; snow melted and power came back on. But one particular
storm, mild in contrast to what came later, will nonetheless go
down in history as the progenitor of an event which would be felt
for years to come.
There was snow early on the day of Friday,
January 2, 1987. The air had turned bitter and winds whipped
around from the northeast. All week the tides had been extremely
high due to a celestial phenomenon called syzygy, an alignment of
the Earth, sun and moon that occurs every nine years. This year
there was an added factor, a concurrent alignment of several
planets, which happens only once in every 35 years.
Syzygy, along with a full moon tide, accounted
for perhaps two to three feet in extra tidal height that day. By
early morning, a full-fledged northeaster, packing sustained winds
of 50 miles per hour (with gusts of 68 miles per hour recorded at
the National Weather Service station on Morris Island), added a
storm surge of eight to 12 feet.
Breakers 10 to 12 feet high crashed over the
narrow strip of North Beach opposite the lighthouse. High tide
arrived at 1 p.m., and a crowd gathered at the overlook to watch
as the Atlantic surged across the approximately 100-yard-wide
beach and flowed into Chatham Harbor.
Several other portions of the beach were
similarly inundated by the January 2 storm. But at low tide the
following day everyone in Chatham saw, for the first time in
decades, a permanent channel linking the inner harbor with the
Atlantic, isolating a three-and-a-half mile section of the beach.
I traveled down the beach early Saturday
morning, at dawn, with Lieutenant Wayne Love of the Chatham police
department. As we rode along the outer beach in the department’s
four-wheel drive pickup, he pointed out the various washovers and
what had been high, solid-looking dunes torn apart by the storm.
Arriving opposite the lighthouse, which still threw its warning
beacon seaward against the cloud-shrouded early morning sky, we
found a meandering stream in the center of a vast, football
field-sized washout. Approximately 18 feet wide, a foot or so
deep, the channel seemed natural, nonthreatening, even beautiful
in its undulating simplicity. Water flowed through at a good clip,
but it would not have been unthinkable for someone in waders or
even a good pair of boots to ford across.
Love had for years overseen the law enforcement
aspect of the beach, which included keeping the various trails
maintained so beach buggies and other off-road vehicles could
travel the length of the beach. It was a popular place, not only
with those who owned camps here, but also for weekenders, many of
whom came nearly every weekend of the year and were just as much a
part of the beach as the beach grass and shallow ponds. Over the
years, Love saw the beach move around a lot, and he knew something
significant had happened. The magnitude of the story didn’t hit
me for a week or so, when I began educating myself about the
barrier beach and listening to people like Love, who had seen
geology happen right in front of their eyes.
Immediately there was speculation that the gap
would close up with the next tide. Yet water continued to flow at
both high and low tide, scouring the channel more at each
exchange. Several days after the breakthrough occurred,
Harbormaster Peter Ford took an aerial view of the beach and said
a mushroom-shaped plume of sand extended 150 yards into the harbor
from the cut, and a bar was building up on the outside, classic
signs of a nascent inlet.
Recognizing that the new cut could be the one
predicted by Dr. Graham Giese in his 1978 report, and realizing
the potential impact, the selectmen held a hastily called meeting
the Monday after the storm to discuss possible remedial measures.
Ford told me after the meeting that "the
consensus of the town fathers is to let nature take its course.
There will be no preventive measures." This hands-off policy
was to later become a key issue in the controversy surrounding the
shoreline erosion that began in earnest ten months later. But Ford
summed up most people’ s attitude in the days immediately
following the initial breakthrough when he said, when asked about
the possibility of the cut closing: "I wouldn’t put five
cents on it either way."
Within two weeks it was clear that the cut was
rapidly establishing itself as an inlet and wasn’t going to
close up immediately, as some thought. Scouring had produced a
500-foot-wide channel with respectable depths at both low and high
tides, enough to allow the 42-foot fishing vessel Asylum to
pass through at half tide. Almost overnight fishermen switched
from the 45-minute trip to the Atlantic via the old Chatham Bars
inlet, between North Beach and Monomoy, to the more direct and
time-saving cut-through, just a few minutes’ steaming time from
the fish pier at Aunt Lydia’s Cove.
 |
| Andrew Harding's Lane in
mid 1987. |
The shortcut wasn’t without hazards; the
current ran six to seven knots and the channel itself was
treacherous and could change configuration in the time it took to
complete a day’s fishing. Fishermen, however, aren’t known for
their trepidation, and most decided the time saved was worth the
risk. The fact that there were no serious injuries or accidents in
those early days, when the breach was still in its early stages of
formation, says something about the navigational skills of Chatham’s
fishermen, and the extreme care and caution practiced by local
boaters.
As soon as he was informed of the situation,
Dr. Giese visited the scene and started taking measurements and
photographs. In late January, Dr. Giese and Dr. David Aubrey, also
of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, proposed a study of the
breakthrough’s effect on tidal ranges, salinity levels and the
distribution of sediment throughout the system. The idea was to
observe the much-described barrier beach process in action, and
develop a computer model that would allow scientists to accurately
predict when breaks would occur in other barrier beaches.
Giese installed computerized gauges to measure
changes in tide level at the fish pier, at Meetinghouse Pond in
Orleans — the head of Pleasant Bay — as well as offshore
instruments to measure wave and current strength. Eventually
funded by Chatham to the tune of $26,000, the study used aerial
photographs, shoreline profiles from six locations from the Cow
Yard Landing to Morris Island, and transit measurements at the
ends of North and South Beach taken from the lighthouse. The
results would be useful to the town in the future in developing a
management plan for the Chatham Harbor waters and shoreline, Dr.
Giese said.
Through January and February, the area was battered by two more
northeast storms, with huge snowfalls and winds up to 80 miles per
hour. At first the breach widened by as much as 1,000 feet in two
weeks; but as it became more established and organized, the rate
of growth slowed to perhaps 100 or so feet per week, as a mean
average. In early March the breach was 1,710 feet wide, with a
main channel 20 feet deep. Dr. Giese, at the time, was guarded in
his predictions about the fate of the cut-through, but left little
doubt about where his attention was focused. "We can’t say
at this moment for certain that this particular break is the one
that will stay open," he said. "But we can say that the
characteristics associated with this break indicate the conditions
are right."
|
