Photo of the Week #31 – Hell Knows No Fury Like Mother Nature Scorned - OBX

I’ve taken a bit of poetic license with the title for this post. This photo was taken on the beach (ocean to my back) at Duck, North Carolina on the group of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks or OBX for those in the know. This shot was taken in January of 2002 just after the New Year holiday. I decided to drive down to OBX just before Christmas that year and find a place to stay on the beach. December and January on the Outer Banks is definitely the off peak season. It’s pretty much deserted to be more accurate.

It was generally cold and breezy for most of the two weeks I was there. But, a “Nor’easter” came through just after New Years Day. The condo I was staying in is hidden behind the sand dune. The stairs go down the other side to a wooden walkway back to the condo. The stairs on the ocean side, where this photo was taken come from the top of the dune all the way down to the beach. As you can see, the storm changed the topography of the beach, which is now approaching the top of the sand dune. Those are my footprints in the sand where I made my way down below the newly drifted sand. It was very impressive.

But, this was not near as impressive as when I drove further south that day to see what other damage the storm had left behind. There I found houses that were off their pilings and laying on their side on the beach. Other houses on pilings were still high and dry, so high and dry, in fact, that the bottom of the steps from the beach leading to the entrances to the houses were as much as two to four feet over my head. In other words, the houses were now about 20 feet above the beach instead of the normal 8 to 10 feet above the beach. Many of the houses had their entire septic/drainage systems exposed on top of the beach. All that sand had been removed by the storm, the opposite result to that displayed in the photo.

All in all, it was a very impressive display of the forces of nature and I’m glad I had an opportunity to experience the storm and witness the results. As a side note, this photo was taken with my very first digital camera, a very simple, albeit primitive device, I used to get my feet wet (no pun intended) in digital photography