South Beach in Edgartown was closed to bathing today at noon, due to high surf.
South Beach and all of the beaches on Nantucket will be closed until Monday morning.
The announcement came from Governor Deval L. Patrick at a telephone press conference Friday, as he reported on preparations for Hurricane Bill.
Almost 3,200 buildings on the Vineyard sit on land which could be inundated by the storm surge of a category four hurricane. Even a category one storm would put almost 400 buildings at risk.
The daunting statistics come out of work done by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which plotted the location of structures on the Island against so-called SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The tragedy of the New England hurricane of 1938 was not the loss of nearly 10,000 homes and business along the shore. It was the psychic destruction of summer for an entire generation. Virtually everyone that lived on or near the New England coast was traumatized by the loss of someone or something they loved. People who lived in homes their grandparents built and thought were safe and secure were killed, injured or saw their property destroyed.
As Hurricane Florence brushed across Bermuda over the weekend,
Vineyarders kept a sharp eye on the weather reports, many thinking with
relief that the Island had dodged another bullet.
Though the Island was spared the brunt of Hurricane Sandy, it brought with it high winds and powerful surf and left in its wake severe erosion, especially on south-facing shorelines. The ocean washed over Norton Point Beach at Katama in Edgartown, turning the eastern end of the beach into a sandbar covered with water at high tide. On Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark, waves carved a U-shaped chunk out of the top of the cliff, and left the beach strewn with rocks, sea foam and seaweed.
Photographed sometime between the summers of 1935 and 1938, these scenes are the oldest known moving images of Island men swordfishing by harpoon.
