Surf Check: Westport

An absolutely brutal wind was blowing Friday, strong enough to knock power out to 80,000 people. We sent a crew out to check the waves.

The wind was SSW, which eliminated the South Shore from any wave watching consideration.

The South Coast gets the shaft on Nor'easter surf. Even the SSW winds only tune up part of the SC, as Martha's Vineyard blocks or lessens much of the heavier surf.

That leaves us Westport, which the Vineyard doesn't serve as a barricade for. She also is very accessible.

It has been a slow storm season. There hasn't been much in the way of high surf or heavy snow. 

We would have gone to Tiverton or Little Compton, which also get high surf with SSW winds. However, it's about a half hour getting from Horseneck Beach to Sakonnet Point, and we didn't have enough sunlight left.

We only consider Rhode Island to be South Coast for this SE Massachusetts website during storms with SSW winds.

There was a nice crowd at Gooseberry Island to check the waves.

I was technically at Gooseberry Neck, as the road was blocked. If I was really motivated, I'd have hoofed it out to the southern shore of Gooseberry Island. It would have been dark by the time I got there, so I just hung at the Neck.

It hasn't happened yet, at least not while I was there with a camera, but Westport is the most likely place to maybe see waves breaking on houses... at least on the South Coast. The SC is more threatened by hurricanes, which don't happen here that much.

You do see houses on stilts from Westport to Wareham, so the SC does get hit. It might be where we set up if a hurricane approached. Nor'easters tend to send our photographers to heavyweights like Duxbury or Eastham.

In the picture above and the video below, you can see Westport using a bulldozer thingy to push the water off of East Beach Road.

Sometimes...

... we do a rapid fire one-two shot from the same vantage point.

Sunday Through Tuesday Nor'easter

A lengthy Nor'easter takes December in like a lion.

The fun should start about mid afternoon as snow. The Cape and the immediate coastlines of the South Shore and South Coast should change to rain rather quickly. This will wash away the snow.

Where it doesn't turn to rain, and this is the tricky part of the forecast, accumulation will be impressive.

New Bedford might have no snow at all by Monday, while Taunton may have 4 inches.

The rainy areas may get into the snow as the storm pulls away. We call this "aftersnow," although real meteorologists probably use a different term.

Power outages are a threat, as winds will be strong enough to down tree limbs.

Coastal flooding will be a concern, as we should have a long period of ENE winds. Tides are astronomically low, which will be a saving grace.

Here's what our local weather stations are saying:

WBZ

WCVB

WHDH

WFXT

NECN

South Coast Surf Check

We went to Westport, Mattapoisett and Fairhaven to check the surf.

Westport leads off.

We went to Horseneck Beach and Gooseberry Point, Neck or whatever they call it.

FAIRHAVEN

MATTAPOISETT

Off to the South Shore....

Overnight Nor'easter

A storm with heavy rains and strong winds will move over eastern Massachusetts tonight.

The storm will form off the mid-Atlantic states. It will intensify as it approaches, and will barrel up Buzzards Bay at us. It will be a fast moving system, and the rain should be done by some point on Thursday morning.

This will be a regional storm, with all of Eastern Massachusetts getting a taste.

Heavy rains and strong winds will be with us overnight, with the winds staying intense even after the rain ends.

Coastal flooding shouldn't be a concern, as the storm is moving very quickly. The winds from the East will be too brief for much surf by the 2 AM high tide, and what surf there is by 2 PM will be dampened by a howling SW wind.

We'll still get a camera somewhere, maybe Westport.

There is a chance of power outages.

The Mad Trucker Of Copicut Road

We continue our Spooky series with a South Coast legend, the Mad Trucker of Copicut Road.

Copicut Road bisects the Freetown/Fall River State Forest, and it runs through both Freetown and Fall River. Town lines are a bit fuzzy on Copicut Road. The pictures I took were tagged by my camera as "Copicut Road, Massachusetts," with no town provided.

Either way, Copicut Road is a mega-isolated dirt road running 7 miles through a forest. It made it into our Most Isolated Roads In Southeastern Massachusetts article, which has subtitles like "Where to bury a body" and "Where to stumble onto a Satanic ritual."

It is one of the anchors of the Bridgewater Triangle, a paranormal theory about the rural/deep suburban parts of Plymouth and Bristol counties.

It also is the home of a local (sub)urban legend, the Mad Trucker of Copicut Road.

The Mad Trucker doesn't have the celebrity status of other paranormal icons like Bigfoot or Nessie. The spread of his legend is local enough that he (the Mad Trucker has never been seen, but I think of the Mad Trucker as being male... this is made more sexist when stirring in the fact that the only ghost trucker I can think offhand is Large Marge) is known by the road instead of the town.

That's a plus in my book. I like the Mad Trucker. I like him more because he seems to have been invented by someone for whom Fall River (most beloved resident = an axe murderer) wasn't scary enough.

I should add here that rural, suburban and urban people are scared by different things. I used to teach in Boston, for ghetto kids. I'd drag them out into the sticks for field trips or class projects now and then. I picked one kid up at his home for such a trip, and I was a bit uneasy in a Heart Of Darkness way as I drove through the ghetto he lived in. One kid watching me knock on this student's door lost a bet when it turned out I wasn't a cop.

Once we were out in the woods by Monponsett Lake in Halifax, the ghetto kids were the uneasy ones. I noticed, and asked about it. "This," I was told by a kid making a sweeping arm gesture at the forest, "is exactly the kind of sh*t where Michael Myers kills all them white girls." Another student added that "black people have more sense than to be hanging around in places like this."

The Mad Trucker's gig is that he catches people driving down his road and he menaces them. People report seeing a big truck come up behind them with the high beams on. He's blaring the air horn. The victim generally fears being overrun by the truck, so they pull over.

When they do, the truck vanishes.

That's the story you hear. Non-survivors may have a more dreadful tale.

We don't know if the Mad Trucker is Mad in a way that means crazy, like the Mad Poet of Bedlam. We don't know if he is Mad as in angry, like the Mad Rapper. We just know that he's Mad.

Of course we set out to capture the Mad Trucker, because we are fearless journalists who let nothing stand in the way of our pursuit of truth.

Of course we went at 2 PM, because we are absolute cowards.

Amazingly, we thought that we had the guy... on film, even. When we moved in for the kill, however... he waved to us and kept going. 

He wasn't Mad at all, and could actually be considered friendly... especially when I was filming him, and even on my best days, I look like I might kill somebody.

This means that the Mad Trucker Of Copicut Road is still out there.

Multi-Tide Nor'easter This Week

An ocean storm will form off of the East Coast, move north as it builds and then stall SE of us for a few days. 

This will give us a persistent NE wind over several tide cycles. This in turn will lead to building surf and beach erosion.

Tides are astronomically low, which puts a cap on coastal flooding. That's the good news. The bad news is that we will most likely have very impressive surf for four to six tide cycles.

We should also get windswept rain. The rain could touch the Cape in Wednesday, everyone should get rain on Thursday and the fun could run through Saturday as a block of high pressure keeps the storm pinned SE of us.

It appears to be a South Coast/South Shore/Cape Cod storm, with the interior feeling lesser wrath from the Storm Gods.

We will have our photographers out on various beaches to let you know how the surf is. 

Let's Name Dartmouth's New Mascot!

If it must happen...

Dartmouth High School sports teams are known as the Indians. They have been called that since the school was founded in 1902, at least to my knowledge.

The Commonwealth does not approve, and may force Dartmouth to change mascots. I assume that MIAA membership is at stake.

I am not so morally unassailable as to say whether or not the D should need a new name. I'm also a Duxbury kid spamming this to you from Cape Cod, and matters like this should be handled by locals.

What I am comfortable doing is:

1) Explaining why a good nickname is important ("The state makes you change a 'bad' one" is among those reasons), and...

2) Suggesting new names. We write this article now and then when towns ponder a name change, and have articles like this Shovel Ready.

A good nickname is important. It inspires town pride, it makes the kids feel good and it may even make the town or the Booster Club some money in apparel sales.

A bad nickname does the opposite. Your kids have a stupid name on their chests for 100 years. Certain groups may be offended by it. It may turn off someone who may have been about to buy a local school sweatshirt.

The town our office is in has the Canalmen as a mascot. It's so whack, it hurts. The girl teams are the Canalwomen, which sounds like a term for a streetwalker. I'm not looking down on anyone in Dartmouth when writing this, worry you not.

We are writing this along the lines of, "If It has to happen, choose a great nickname this time."

Let's kick some ideas around, shall we?


SHAMROCKS

Nobody is offended by Shamrocks. It's tough to offend the Irish, anyhow.

Shamrocks are lucky, and what sports team couldn't use some luck? Shamrocks are also green, so the school doesn't have to repaint anything.

Dartmouth is only 11% Irish. That's not bad, although it pales when compared to the nearby Irish Riviera. Dartmouth is 40% Portuguese, but the Portuguese don't have that sort of fun stereotype stuff like leprechauns and clover.

That said...


LINGUICA

I do wonder how many high school teams are named for things like sausage, pizza toppings, breakfast meats and so forth.

Someone has to be the first. Why not Dartmouth? It does tip a hat to the town's majority minority.

While this may be a bit phallic to name a high school team, it could be softened to Linguica Pizza, which would take the phallus away and which would also stand alone among ,American sports team names.


SHARKS

Dartmouth isn't really known for sharks, but Duxbury doesn't have a lot of dragons, either. That didn't stop them from naming the team after a fearsome and terrifying creature. (Editor: Duxbury High School is on St. George Street). Why should it stop Dartmouth?

Sharks took the duke when Monomoy had a team to name, but that's like 100 miles from Dartmouth. There would be little overlap.

The P.A. guy could make intimidating use of the JAWS movie score, thus giving Dartmouth a tactical advantage over schools with wimpier names.


DUCKS

Alliteration comes up when things are getting named, which is why superheroes have names like Peter Parker and Wonder Woman.

Kids would love the cutesy nickname, and Dartmouth Ducks rolls off the tongue well enough. It could be weaponized into Dartmouth Sucks by other schools at away games, and you have to consider stuff like that when naming a team.

Alliteration could also give us the Dukes, the Darts, the Devils (Editor: Fairhaven has the Blue Devils, so scratch that one), the Doom, the Dinosaurs, the Dabs, the Doms/Dommes, the Dirt Dogs, the Dinghys, the Destroyers, the DC-10s, the Diamonds....

The Dudes would work if the school were all boys.


COMMODORES

Dartmouth has a lot of rich people boats, yacht clubs, stuff like that. They deserve some love.

Scituate has the Sailors and Gloucester has the Fishermen, but Dartmouth should go more high end.

Socioeconomic taunting can be fun if you play schools from less advantaged towns. One of the writers for this publication played soccer for Duxbury, and the girls would get various taunts about being snobby princesses when playing less wealthy schools.

She used to give it back by flaunting wealth. She'd answer money taunts by other players with "I just got accepted to Yale," or "Daddy bought me a horse" or "My house is worth 900,000 dollars."

Dartmouth doesn't need to go that deep. Giving the team a snobby name is good enough.



ZOMBIES

Paranormal names aren't that unusual. Salem has the Witches, Duxbury has the Dragons... long pause..... ummm.... OK, maybe paranormal names are a bit unusual.

Think of the school spirit/crowd participation aspect. Imagine if everybody shows up for games dressed as/acting like Zombies. The P.A. announcer does nothing but moan. The cheerleaders abandon traditional routines for shambling around and biting people.

"Ghosts" would be easier to get people to dress as, but we might have problems if/when urban teams drive out into the country and there's a crowd of people in white sheets.


MIST

We suggested this for Middleboro, but it would also work in Dartmouth.

Give the team all grey uniforms, even the numbers will be grey. Paint the field gray. If it isn't naturally foggy, use cleverly-placed dry ice to make the field look like the interior of Jeff Spicoli's van.

Grey uniforms in a foggy environment would give Dartmouth a tactical advantage. You can't cover what you can't see.

You also can't throw the ball with any accuracy if the fog is too thick, but Dartmouth will have the twin advantages of Familiarity With The Conditions and the more important "We called the play, we know where it's going and can thus just throw the ball into a general area."



MEAN GREEN

Again, you don't have to change the school colors, which means that you can still rock your green D hat. That's important.

This name will draw forth ugly associations with both Bullying and Marijuana. That's unfortunate, but the name is pretty cool.


DOBERMANS

Who doesn't love dogs?

Dogs generally only turn up in sport names with Bulldogs and sometimes Terriers. Bulldogs rule, but there are many breeds of dogs.

Dobermans are fierce, athletic, intelligent, tough, loyal, protect turf well and will kill you if they get angry... exactly the traits you want in a field hockey player.

There are 2500 or so other breeds, but they're some other town's problem. Let them be the Schnauzers.


SOMETHING TECHNICALLY LEGAL BUT MORE OFFENSIVE

What better way to stick it to the PC crowd? You want to change our name, huh? OK....

Analyze the wording of whatever MIAA rule makes them ditch the Indians, find a loophole and trot out the Dartmouth Pimps on Opening Day 2020.

Various Strolls

We empty the gallery, we hope you enjoy it. This is from either Mattapoisett or Fairhaven.

Dartmouth

Buzzards Bay

Duxbury

Dartmouth

Bourne

Dartmouth

More D

Duxbury

Duxbury

Westport

Plymouth

Duxbury

Aptucxet

Cape Cod

Duxbury above, Bourne below

Duxbury Beach

Brant Rock

Bourne

America

Duxbury Beach