Supermoon Flood Tide

There was a Supermoon on Tuesday, a storm on Wednesday and our shutterbugs out Thursday, seeing what was what.

As you know, a supermoon is the full moon which coincides with the lunar perigee. The perigee is the moon's closest approach to Earth.

It results in very high tides, as you can see here in Green Harbor.

You get about 4 Supermoons a year. There is one in March. The one in November, 2016 was the closest in 68 years, and wont be beaten until 2034. 

Unless medical technology makes a great leap forward, the largest Supermoon anyone reading this might see is in December of 2052. The next Lunar Eclipse Supermoon is March of 2021.

I was going to use this artsy shot to say something profound. Instead, I will note that, like the similar sounding Superman, supermoons also make people say "Look, up in the sky..."

Moving on to the never-disappointing Duxbury Beach.

The DBC is situated between the sea and the marsh. It leaves them vulnerable to flooding by both surf and surge. As you can see in the video above, the road floods in extreme high tides, even if there is no notable surf happening.

Sometimes, the surf floods them. Sometimes, the tide floods them. It's like that Sixteen Tons song... "If the right don't get you, then the left one will."

After glorifying people for driving through puddles, we made a few inland/brackish/estuary/transition zone stops, just to see what's what. This is Colby Hewitt Road in Marshfield.

Old Cove Road in Duxbury. This is near the high school, and was my spot to park when I ditched a class and went to Benchwarmer Subs. I may also have blazed here a few times, who can remember all that 1980s stuff, right?

No offense, but the guy who has to walk over a pier during a supermoon to get into his house is probably cooler than you... perhaps even cooler than me, and that ain't easy.

In case you're wondering how close a Supermoon gets to overwhelming the Bluefish River Bridge, the answer is what sports betting people call "a long foot."

I've never actually caught a storm here, as the action on the barrier beach is always more compelling. It would be interesting, though... maybe some time in the future, when Johnny Law cop-blocks me from heading down Gurnet Road.

I was gonna buy this house, but my accountant insisted upon a 484 square foot sea shanty on the Cape.

A quick dip into Kingston...

The Jones River, flooded by the tide.

Saturday Nor'easter, Coastal Flooding Concerns

You'd think that a tornado crossing the Cape Cod Canal would be the damage-doer of the week, but you'd be wrong.

A powerful Nor'easter, infused with the remains of former Hurricane Willa, will hit us on Saturday. She will bring soaking rain, high winds and damaging surf.

The storm should arrive early Saturday. The worst of the rain will be Saturday morning. We should get an inch or two. The afternoon should be less rainy, but precipitation is possible into Sunday.

If you head way inland and north, you may even see a bit of snow.

Winds will be E/NE, and clock in around 20 mph with gusts along the coast up to 50 mph.

That wind, blowing all day, will amp up the surf. It should produce a 1-2 foot surge on top of a waning full moon tide.  That will send powerful surf at vulnerable coastlines.

We'll be watching Duxbury Beach, and perhaps will embed a photographer there. He'll have to sneak by Johnny Law, but that's nothing new to this publication.

Duxbury just decided to ignore seawall repairs until FEMA funding comes in, which may take a year. Saturday will be a very good test of whether this policy is brilliant or reckless. As Napoleon once said, "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."

They stand a real chance of seeing waves equal to the March storms. Seas will be at 10-12 feet not too far off of South Shore beaches, and up near 20 feet off the Outer Cape. Waves hitting the shore will be about half of that.

The worst tide should Saturday afternoon, but the waves could still be menacing on Sunday. It looks to be a 3 tide storm.

This storm should bring an immediate end to the SE Massachusetts fall foliage season. We'll have our people out Thursday and Friday to get some pics before that happens.

We're a few days out, and the forecast could change. We will be back with an update.

Cape Cod Surf Check, 9/20/18

Former Hurricane Florence was nice enough to kick some surf back at us as she went back out to sea. We sent our people to the Outer Cape on Thursday to see what was what.

Not this person, she just got into one of our shots. We needed someone in the foreground for scale, as Hooper once told Brody.

We started at Coast Guard Beach, in Eastham.

We got out there way after high tide, so the pics have a bit less drama.

The surf on Cape Cod was about a foot higher than the South Shore surf.

Outer Cape seawall 

"The path of the righteous man..."

Surf always.looks better from an angle until it gets really big.

My kid calls this "Potato Chip light"

After Nauset, we were off to Marconi Beach, in Wellfleet. 

We were there hours after high tide, but we did our level best for you.

My phone keeps auto-correcting Marconi Beach into Macaroni Beach... and when I spam it around Facebook, it keeps changing it to Missy Marconi, some girl I went to high school with.

Either way, that's all for today's Cape Cod surf check.

We also did a South Shore Surf Check.