The Shore in Limbo

I heard and felt the devil in the shrieking roar of the wind the night of the storm.  I felt the presence of evil and wickedness as I trudged in the dark through piles of stinging sand to watch the ocean meet the bay and fire rage in the sky.  And the evil is still around, I walk past it every day.  Entire tracts of homes missing, many others gutted, oh look they demolished that one, now just an empty lot, oh the bulldozed dunes are blowing away in the west wind, the ocean is still high, why is the beach still so small?  Things are still not correct.  The police are paranoid, the towns are paranoid, and if I let myself I could easily feel the headaches of all the homeowners who may have lost the shore or the businessess that lose from the lack of people and construction site beaches that don't want anyone on them.

The line of spooky oceanfront homes stretches for miles.  How many lots will be back to sand once the money gets worked out.

While it's winter and the shore is always quiet and forgotten about in the winter, the real measure of where things stand is when the days are longer and the sun is higher and brighter.  The measure of progress or the lack of it will be revealed as spring turns into summer.  What I want is things to go back to the way they were, because when you think back it was pretty good.  Of course the crowds are horrible at times and the waves usually suck and the fish always seem like they are out too far, but there were always those times, always a chance, where it was possible to score big.  Dozens and dozens of fish with no one or friends.  A-frame waves and a nice west wind, warm water, with only the souls you want with you.

Looks like some other planet, because it is.

A lonely small S swell wave breaking on a new outer bar.  Fortunately, January has been pretty calm and flat, a wierd thing to be glad for.

The mean sea level trend is +3.99mm/year which is equivalent to a change of 1.31ft in 100 years. NOAA

The rate of sea level rise at the Atlantic City station is about 1.31ft in 100 years.  Almost every barrier island in the world is shrinking, even the ones that aren't intensively developed.  With a higher water level, the storm surge has been higher from even minor to moderate storms.  It doesn't take as powerful a storm anymore to cover the beach and eat the dunes, and then keep the sand.  Last year I was in one of the hardest hit areas about to surf an average 3-5ft swell and the ocean was up to the dune fences for no reason.  Then you get the real storm, and the storm surge is off the charts, and it's able to do that much more damage because the water level is higher.  That's on top of how blocking high pressures make storms go where they aren't supposed to go.  The sea level rise, on this chart, really began to move upwards starting in the 1930s.

I always wonder how many more percentage points the ozone layer can deplete, two more percent, five more percent, ten percent, before the person who isn't into such things will go, "Oh shit! We better do something about that.  Right now!"

What Now?

Sometimes I like to think I am an alien from space and that I have been sent to Earth with a mission- save this planet.  People would say "Oh you're crazy".  And I say, well, sometimes I like to think big.  Other times I think I am a human and I am small and I really don't know that much other than how to ride waves and catch fish.  Then people would say "that's more realistic".  But I will say sometimes I just like to think small.  Either way, in my observation from this storm, I've noticed human beings put much effort into building and maintaining walls around themselves.  And when their house is knocked down, or flooded, or gutted and the walls get flimsy or fall down, the number one effort is getting those walls back up.  I have to put those walls up again, so that I don't feel vulnerable, and so that I am secure.

Secure from what?  Another storm?  The origin of low pressure systems is not in a home.  Storms happen outside the home, beyond the walls, they come from the atmosphere.  This is some weird shit, but a storm is the expression of the mood of the atmosphere at that given moment.  There's some heat over here, some colder air over there, and the storm will be here.  And people will put up the walls again.  "I don't want to see it.  I want to be safe in my home and I don't want to see what is going on out there."  And they will have success with that.  They go to the mall and school, and sit in the car and it works.  But it only works for so long.  Ignorance is not always bliss.  You may not know the storm that made the water climb up the first floor, but you still get the frustration and despair of having to rip apart your home, and you still have the months of metered worry and concern of getting those walls back.

 

 

So now what?

 

One thing I like to do with fishing is present information and let whoever I'm telling it to decide how they feel about it or what they want to do with it.  Once the information leaves my brain and mouth, it's yours in as much as what your response is and what you do with it.  Blow it off, want to know more, say ah and go do something else, those are your choices, not mine.  I am just as happy catching fish alone as I am with a friend.  But if that friend and I are on it, and wanting to get more fish and just go up in that zone, that is a great thing.  I presume Oct 29, 2012 changed many things here at the shore, like the stuff that goes on in the head and comes out of the mouth.  When things like this happen, it can be just another opporutinity to put the walls back up, or it can be a way to get an entirely new view of the weather.

 

Global temperature rose abruptly starting around 1920 through 1944.  The 1938 Hurricane devastated New England, during the warmest year on record to the time.  The 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane caused damage in New Jersey just like you are seeing now, it was the worst New Jersey hurricane of the 20th century, in what was then the warmest year on record to the time.

It is possible to look for the holes in the information in this graph, and to find an infinite number of them.  If you go into something with the intention of becoming lost, you will find "your wish is my command".  I know that looking at a chart is not the same as experiencing the black sea and crossed up waves ahead of the 1938 Hurricane or the 2012 storm, it just isn't.  Bars and lines on a graph are not the same as finding an inlet where your house once stood.  Reading the words '1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane' is not really comparable to what you would get out of watching the Atlantic City boardwalk get destroyed by 'an enormous 30 foot greenish wave'.  And in looking at my documentation of the storm of 2012, it isn't the same as my experience of being there.  The trick, the magic, is finding the way that most closely represents, presents again, the experience, if that is the goal.

2013 will start low can climb high.  Maybe 2012 was the end of something after all, at least around here.  What is certain is that 2013 is the beginning of the after storm life.



That's it for This Year

The empty fall beach of 2012, save for the bulldozers and an illegal stroller.

The best way to change what you are doing is to do something else.  The beach, the shore, and the people who call the area home deserve a few weeks of peace and quiet.

BeachfishingNJ will resume in January 2013.  Happy New Year.

Upside-down in 2012

It's all topsy-turvy.  I haven't been serious about fishing since the Friday before the storm.  I can go fishing if I want to, but I don't care about it right now.  Now there is Doug, who probably used to feel the same way most of the time, he's calling me and telling me about how he caught a 35 inch striper and how his friend told him to get to it right away, fish on every other cast.  Doug says he was nailing them on a bomber and a Daiwa SP, and that he had five this morning.  I used to call Doug and tell him about all the fish I'm catching knowing he wasn't fishing at all, and now he is calling me telling me about all the fish he is catching and I'm not fishing at all.  I can't fish my beach right now, at least not in the way I want to, and Doug can wake up every morning and fish his beach any way he wants to and everyday he wants to.

The end of a healthy beach system

Where there used to be huge dunes, there is cosmetic Band-Aid sand.  I've seen every mile of the Jersey Shore, and these used to be some of the biggest dunes in the developed areas.  Now it's cosmetic Band-Aid sand.  All those years of beach grass and root systems, gone.  Replaced by mush that will wash away in half a tide.  I'll never forget that earthy plant smell that was in the air while the ocean was eating the real dunes.  The 1984 Northeaster took a good amount (learned from photographs) and some came back, but not all of it.  The 1991 and 1992 storms took a lot more, some came back, but a lot didn't.  This storm took most of what was left.

The end of an age.

You know when people say 'you can't buy happiness'.  Sometimes I think that philosophy should be bulldozed up and put in the trash pile in the parking lot.  Tangible things are just as important as intangible things.  So even though many people have made it through with the intangible thing called their life, many of those people have lost or damaged possessions.  So when I see a giant pile of ruined stuff in the parking lot, I empathize with those whose stuff it is and what they are going through right now.  Your life, the lives around you, your home, your cars and your possessions are how I order what is important.  Any loss or damage to any of those five things is going to hurt, and I can feel that hurt coming from the island right now when I tune in.

Another perspective of how much east wind was over the ocean on the day of landfall.

The prevailing wind in the middle latitudes is westerly.  It was very unusual to have easterly winds across the entire North Atlantic on October 29th, the day of landfall.  The degree of how unusual that is, is equivalent to going up to someone and having them say it was the warmest October in Nuuk, Greenland since at least 1978, right around where that high pressure that made all the east winds was getting jammed up.

Banned from the big sky.  Donald was shut out from his first beach view in a month by fog.  Sometimes you just know.

Donald and I needed to get out from inland and so he decided to take a fishing road trip.  My enthusiasm for it was about level with staying inside, but I opted for the trip.  We woke up to fog, drove down in fog, and hit the beach in fog.  Weather refugees who can't escape.  We hit the beach and the water actually looked pretty good, from what we could see of it.  I gave it about 10 casts with a yellow mambo.  No hits.  Ok let's get out of here.  We checked another beach, cast for a bit, looked at each other and didn't have to say nahhhh.  Let's get out of here.  If it's not going to be correct, it's not going to be correct.  One thing I do is let myself do what it wants, and it is telling me that I have no patience to cast into quiet water with a damp S wind in my face.  I can't put it together to fish this fall, and so I won't.

Marine Cyclonic Storm

Of course the real reason for the trip was the brainstorm session of what official name to give a type of storm like Frankenstorm Super Storm Hurricane Hybrid Sandy.  It took Donald all of 10 seconds to say without reservation MARINE CYCLONIC STORM.  I instantly liked it.  It was a marine cyclonic storm.  It was a cyclone that had originated over the ocean and was sustained and energized, at least partially, by being over the ocean.  That leaves the tropical and extratropical confusion out of the name, since marine cyclonic storms are storms that display both tropical and extratropical characteristics.  Then the official weather forecast will look like this:

. . . DANGEROUS MARINE CYCLONIC STORM HEADING FOR MID-ATLANTIC COAST WITH LANDFALL EXPECTED SOMEWHERE IN NEW JERSEY . . . THIS STORM IS VERY LARGE AND IS EXPECTED TO HAVE A WIDESPREAD IMPACT . . .

. . . A DANGEROUS MARINE CYCLONIC STORM IS FORECAST TO LANDFALL IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES.  A LARGE BLOCKING HIGH PRESSURE NEAR GREENLAND IS FORECAST TO STEER THE STORM INTO NEW JERSEY.  THE HIGHEST WINDS IN THE CYCLONE ARE 90MPH WITH GUSTS TO 115MPH.  PRESSURE IS 941MB.  THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS SYSTEM.  LANDFALL IS EXPECTED TO COINCIDE WITH THE FULL MOON HIGH TIDE.  THE COMBINATION OF A LARGE FETCH OF EASTERLY WINDS AROUND THE BLOCKING HIGH, THE WINDS OF THE STORM, EXCEEDINGLY LOW ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE, AND THE ANTICIPATED ARRIVAL OF THE STORM AT AN ASTRONOMICAL HIGH TIDE WILL CREATE A POSSIBLE RECORD STORM SURGE NORTH AND EAST OF THE CENTER.  THE STORM SURGE MAY REACH 10-15FT.  BARRIER ISLAND OVER WASH AND SEVERE BACK BAY FLOODING IS LIKELY WHERE THE SURGE COMES ASHORE.  INLAND, HIGH WINDS GUSTING FROM 80-90MPH WILL LIKELY CAUSE WIDESPREAD DOWNED TREES AND POSSIBLY LONG LASTING POWER OUTAGES . . .

. . . A MARINE CYCLONIC STORM IS A CYCLONE THAT ORIGINATES OVER MARINE WATERS . . . AND IS NEITHER CLASSIFIED AS A TROPICAL CYCLONE OR AN EXTRATROPICAL CYCLONE . . .

It was at times extratropical, at times a hurricane, and most times it was a cyclone that wasn't really either one.  It's in its own class.  Marine Cyclonic Storms.  The Marine Cyclonic Storm of 2012.  The 2012 Marine Cyclonic Storm.  Marine Cyclonic Storms.

So Doug catches all the fish now, I'm not fishing.  The dunes were huge, now they are fake.  The westerlies became easterlies, even if only for a bit.  Donald and I fish lures, but we fished a beach that is known for bait.

What is next?