March Supermoon Storm Tide, Marshfield and Duxbury

Supermoon nor'easter? You know we're sending a crew out!

Marshfield and Duxbury were Poseidon's canvas on Friday.

Deluxebury and Vegas got off easily. The storm went south to north through the center of SE Massachusetts. We didn't spend much time in her strongest wind field. The east winds came at low tide, and were north winds at high tide. This knocked the seas down some, saving the area from more dangerous surf.

Supermoon tides, which are the tides when the moon makes her closest approach to us (the Moon has an egg shaped orbit, and distances from Earth vary), are dangerous. If a storm is behind them, the danger is exponentially increased.

The north wind is cool because I can stand pretty much right on the seawall and the spray is blown away from me. I was dry for almost all of this assignment.

The lessened wind/wave interaction was the difference between waves smashing the wall and waves smashing the houses. A supermoon high tide is usually all of the head start that a damaging storm needs.

A good day not to go fishing. Just kidding, every day is a good day to go fishing. Consider the alternatives...

It would be funny if the fisherman stayed home, only to have the ocean come to him.

Gurnet Road floods during supermoon tides even without a storm, although that only stops some people.

Duxbury Proper doesn't flood much, but supermoon tides get it done on Washington Street...

...and Powder Point.

Powder Point doesn't get waves, however... this is why the townspeople rightly voted for seawall repairs on the barrier beach.

Otherwise....

We usually add Hull or Scituate into these articles, but I instead used the travel time to get a linguica bagel from The Coffee Shack in Green Harbor. I do not regret this decision.

Duxbury's seawall repairs held up, although I left before the tide went out.

Overall, it was a good show. No major damage anywhere I saw...

We may even have ended with the last snow of the season, below...

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.