The weather people are up to it agin. They are tracking Winter Storm Virgil as it makes it's way to the east coast sometime early Monday morning. They are calling for "several" inches of wet slushy snow and the possibility of coastal flooding. Just what we need here on the Jersey Shore. Enough of that.
This morning the temps were around 40 with a NNW wind at 10. It was still nice enough out to go out and spend some time scouting some beaches along the shore. I hadn't been to one of my "favorite" beach nourishment beaches since they stopped pumping over a month and a half ago so I figured I'd see how much sand remains.....oh yeah, that was $13 million dollars spent for a half mile of sand.
The first step it getting to the beach was traversing the sand pile that had formed on the Ocean Avenue side of the sea wall. Mother Nature has taken the sand that was pumped up onto the beach and pushed it up over the sea wall. The sloping sand "nourishment" has created a ramp for the water to run up and over, especially is those areas where a path or depression is formed in the sand where beach access points are near the steps and breaks in the rocks.
When you do get up to the top of the wall you can see, well, things aren't much different than before. One difference from after last years replenishment, and after this years replenishment is the groin protecting the beach club is as visible and accessible as ever, the only difference being that the big pocket and hole in front of it is gone. Why, because the sand has found it's way back into the ocean.
I wish part of the contract during these projects was before, during, after, and way after aerial imagery was taken to show what, in the end, was accomplished. One positive, is that during these projects, shipping channels are dredged to facilitate vessel traffic which also creates deep cuts which can facilitate water movement into and out of the back bays and rivers, but that may be about it.
As I always say ebb tides are a great time to get out and walk the beaches, rivers, and bays to see the current status of the structure that holds your favorite bait and predator fish when things do finally heat up, hopefully in the next month....or so.
Kudos to Clean Ocean Action and Waves of Action for their beach clean-up that was held yesterday, a tremendous amount of dunnage, debris, and garbage was removed from the beach and placed curbside for pickup. There have been several cleanups from Sandy Hook down to Island Beach State Park which will make the natural resource safer for the animals that live their and the people that enjoy it.
Saw one party boat out running a trip this morning. The Jamaica out of Brielle ran a striper trip yesterday and they marked some fish but they couldn't get a bite, according to Captain Bogan's report on his website, HERE.
