NJ - Lee brings beach woes for the Jersey shore
Through the summer, public works crews worked with lifeguards to keep the beach access open in front of the Upper Township Beach Patrol headquarters on Williams Avenue in Strathmere, even as high tides would pull sand from the beach side.
The lifeguards are off the beach for the summer in Strathmere, and visitors can no longer use that walkover.
“It was pretty much done this weekend,” Township Committee member Curtis Corson said Monday.
South Jersey dodged a direct hit from Hurricane Lee over the weekend, as the enormous storm passed well off the coast to make landfall in Canada at near-hurricane strength after washing New England with rain and wind.
In New Jersey, the weather was fine, but on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the storm pushed sizable swells toward the coast, leading beach patrols to keep bathers out of the water entirely Friday and Saturday.
The rough ocean conditions and lack of lifeguards in some areas led to a bunch of rescues in the region. In Margate, a girl and her grandmother were rescued from the jetty. In North Wildwood, three swimmers were rescued from the ocean and taken to Cape Regional Medical Center.
Wildwood's Beach Patrol issued warnings ahead of the storm passing about 700 miles off the coast, Capt. Ed Schneider said. Between the warnings and cold, windy air, the city's beaches saw minimal crowds over the weekend, he said.
"We had pretty extreme wave height Friday and Saturday, along with strong rip currents and rough surf," Schneider said.
Doug Bergen, Ocean City’s spokesperson, credited that call for a weekend with no water rescues. Some surfers fought their way into the overhead waves, getting dramatic rides, but most people headed warnings and kept their feet dry when the currents were at their strongest.
But those powerful waves hit beaches with considerable force. Ocean City recently completed a beach replenishment project, with another project expected to build beaches in the island’s south end this fall.
“Because of the shape of the island, the area around Fifth Street continues to be the most vulnerable. Fortunately, Ocean City beaches were relatively healthy before Lee’s arrival — after the replenishment project at the north end earlier this year,” Bergen said.
As of Monday, staff at the Coastal Research Center at Stockton University had not yet checked the impact of the storm, but Kim McKenna, the interim executive director of the center, said they expect to see erosion along the coast.
Just how much erosion is yet to be determined, but McKenna said there are hot spots that likely got hit the hardest. Those are typically in the north end of barrier islands, where the currents from the nearby inlets can scour shorelines.
