Life after Hurricane Sandy

Since the Rockaway peninsula residents experienced unprecedented property damage due to Hurricane Sandy I was interested to see what changes had taken place in the marsh. Strangely, all of the massive piles of wood (and other) debris that accumulated from our many volunteer cleanup efforts over the past two years…were completely gone. Not a remnant lay in sight. But where did it all go?

The police had set up a checkpoint on the main boulevard along the peninsula. So instead of going through the hassle of driving through slow-moving traffic, we walked along the shoreline to reach the marsh.

Looking south from the bay side you can see there is a new channel, which hopefully will allow the marsh to flood more easily during high tides. The original channel (not pictured) is now much wider and deeper, which means there are now two channels into the marsh from the bay.

Looking north toward the bay. The dunes that acted as a flood barrier are now much flatter. And the new channel is visible from here.

These channels (above and below) are also viewed looking north.

The next three images show a landscape that is unrecognizable due to the absence of the many piles of debris that disappeared during the recent hurricane.

This area on the west side of the marsh might be where some of our collected debris got transferred to.

High of 52 °F | Humidity (avg) 52% | Wind @ 16 mph (NW) | High Tide 5.2 ft. @ 10:59 AM | Moon 86% visible.