Reflections on an October coastal storm

As it is with meteorologists, journalists get excited when coastal storms and blizzards start heading our way.  Such was the case last week with the highly unusual scenario of all kinds of weather patterns converging, diverging, mixolerging (my term) but thankfully, for us along the Delaware coast, never merging. Apologies to Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant.

What had me most concerned was the report from a storm-surge specialist who said the coastal storm threatened high tides of historic proportions for the mid-Atlantic coast because of high tides after high tides piling on top of one another due to the persistent northeast winds.

Storm of '62 popped immediately to the front of my mind. In March of that year a strong northeast storm pounded our coast for several days causing millions and millions worth of damage up and down Delmarva's oceanfront. Inland towns like Millsboro and Milton, at the headwaters of Indian and Broadkill rivers, also sustained serious flood damage.

But something happened with this storm, something that kept the tides from piling on top of one another.  After each high tide - and each was higher than normal - the tide went back out again rather than being held in by the winds.  Moon pull, star alignment, Hurricane Juaquin pulling the tides in the opposite direction from the wind?  I don't know. But something definitely pulled the tides back.

On Saturday, after three days of storming, I was in Rehoboth, at the vulnerable north end of the Boardwalk in front of the Henlopen Hotel, at about 9:30 a.m. with dozens of other gawkers.  The boiling waves were already licking the toe of the dunes on a rising tide with three more hours to go.  I made a plan to come back at 12:40 p.m. when the tide would be high, figuring the dunes might be flattened by then. But when I returned, the only thing that was higher than the waves I saw at 9:30 was the number of people with the same idea I had.

The tide was a little higher, but not much - fortunately - while the wind was blowing a steady 30.  One man asked if I thought it was blowing 50. I said no.  "It's in the 30s.  If it were blowing 50 we would be rolling down the Boardwalk like tumbleweed across the prairie."

Just to make sure I wasn't mistaken, I opened my phone and navigated my way to the Delaware Environmental Observation System (EOS) which has a tree of weather-observing instruments along the Boardwalk in front of Stuart Kingston. I scrolled down to the icon showing the Boardwalk site.  Sure enough. Real time. The wind was blowing 31 steady and gusting 35.

Molly Murray, veteran Delaware journalist for the News Journal, came along, hustled by the breeze. "It was blowing harder yesterday," she said.  "In the 40s." I noticed the wind flipping the pages of her reporter's notebook.

Then my friend Carol Short came along, loving the power of the storm.

"Where's Ralph?" I asked.

"Couldn't get him out of the house," she said.

Ralph's spent plenty of time offshore in wind and waves so maybe he decided to stay on the couch.

So, we got lucky, one more time.

In Lewes later on, I took a look at the Great Marsh and it was a total inland bay, Canary Creek indistinguishable  The land the Lingo-Townsend group plans to develop, overlooking the Great Marsh, was high and dry with a healthy looking crop of soybeans waving in the breeze.

Lots of saltwater flooding here and there in all the usual places, a fair amount of wind, but, all-in-all, for whatever reason, the gods smiled one more time on what I like to call the sweet spot of the world's sweet spot.