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Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach, VA
Chesapeake Bay lashing out on Chic’s Beach, VA
Kill Devil Hills, NC
South Nags Head, NC
South Nags Head, NC
Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach, VA
From coastal roads under water, washed away and buried beneath sand, devastating beach erosion to roofing in Wildwood, NJ getting blown off, this was a storm that packed the punch of a landfalling hurricane and will go down as one of the strongest non-tropical storm to hit the Mid-Atlantic coast in years. The damage estimates could top a billion dollars, rare even for a hurricane!. Updated Comments by Mark Vogan (Monday, Nov 16, 2009): When annalysing the information filtering through on this coastal storm, The images and info to me, is very similar to the damage that resulted from category 2 Hurricane Isabel in 2003, although flooding and wind speeds weren’t as intense, this storm still packed a major punch along the same area that got hammered by Isabel and in some causes the results from the Great Storm of November 2009 were worse in some areas with higher tidal surges. Images from the Outer Banks of NC are eerily similar to that from Isabel!
According to AccuWeather’s Meghan Evans, Some low-lying roads such as State Route 1 in Delaware was under seveal feet of water. Portions of that same road were also under 3 feet of sand too. The flooding in places such as Ocean City, NJ was considered the worst in at least a decade.
Countless trees and power loss across the Mid-Atlantic region was caused by the strong east winds blowing off the Atlantic and the coastal flooding was a combination of both torrential rainfall from the once super-loaded once-tropical system and the 1,000 miles of wave buildup across the Atlantic and onshore from North Carolina to Long Island and even up to Maine.
Winds blowing at between 55 to 60 mph at Wildwood, New Jersey tore 3 roofs of motels there.
Windswept rains were reported up to Boston, Massachusetts as well as basement flooding in Lexington, MA.
According to the Pilotonline.com, Preliminary damage estimates for the Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia areas at $21.8 million.
Since the storm rolled into the Virginia-North Carolina coast on Tuesday, some 350,000 customers lost power in Hampton Roads and Richmond, VA.
As many as 5,000 residents on Hattaras Island, NC were stranded when 800 feet of pavement on N.C. 12 at Mirlo Beach was lost to the storm and it was said that until surf action had calmed, repair to N.C. 12 was impossible.
On Saturday morning, another high tide and wave battering, resulted in the collapse of a house at Nags Head, NC and was the third to do so since Thursday. Basically much of the beaches all along the extremely exposed and vunerable Outer Banks recieved severe beach erosion.
The following information is from AccuWeather.com Jesse Ferrell’s blog
Highest Wave Heights: 26 foot off the Virginia coast
Highest Wind Gusts:
Oceana, VA: 75 mph
Cape Henry, VA: 72 mph
Norfolk, VA: 74 mph
Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, VA: 71 mph
An interesting note: The highest winds have been onshore. This is not the case with purely tropical systems because their highest winds are around the center. In this case, the highest winds were at the southwest end of the fetch: southeast Virginia.
The following rainfall amounts of over 10 inches were recorded in Virginia (NWS):
Suffolk: 10.98″
Hampton: 10.59″
Norfolk: 10.14″
Thanks for reading.
-Mark
Today’s Weather Here
High 50 degrees Low N/A
Mostly cloudy with a November-like feel to the air.
>If only they had battened down the hatches like we do during gales here in the UK, the damage seen could have been avoided. Building houses from matchsticks directly next to the sea can only lead to structural damage during these minor events.
I am off to the land of nod. That's all Folks.