The Old and the Restless

A week after the storm, Sandra and I walked a mile south from Hiles Avenue to look at the damage to the dunes protecting the expensive houses on Van Kleek Drive (New Smyrna's "millionaires row"). Paul is standing in front of the first house south of the Hiles ramp (in the background). The dune has been eroded back about 15 feet closer to the house forming a "sand cliff" about 8 feet high. Sandra is standing in front of the eroded dune sand cliff (?12 feet high?) that protects a huge house. Sandra is standing in front of a damaged beach stairway very close to another Van Kleek house. The dune just south of a sea wall has eroded 20 feet right back to the swimming pool foundation. While the municipal beach walkways were better built and withstood the storm better than private walkways, our "favourite" municipal walkway to the south end of Van Kleek lost its side railings in the storm. The huge house in the background is under co...

At the end of the first week of January 2018, the authorities declared a "double red flag" alert for 3 full days. This level of alert, which prohibits all driving and walking on the beach, because of strong undertows and very high waves, has apparently only been declared during hurricanes before. After spending 3 days strengthening off of New Smyrna Beach, the storm "bomb" continued to strengthen as it moved northwards leaving inches of snow in Savannah and even more snow in Charleston SC. Since neither city has snow removal or salting equipment, their streets and airports were closed for a couple of days. Then, the storm strengthened to about the same level as Hurricane Sandy as it moved north up the coast creating blizzards from Chesapeake Bay to Canada's Maritime provinces. On January 5, Daryl's 70th birthday, the winds dropped enough that Sandra and I decided to go for a "beach inspection" walk north from Castle Reef to the 27th Avenue park...