The intense winter storm followed by extremely frigid temperatures caused severe tidal erosion and sent Island plumbers scrambling on frozen pipe calls over the weekend.
The temperature on Martha’s Vineyard dipped to one degree above zero on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service, with the windchill bottoming out at minus 21 degrees.
Chris Kennedy, superintendent for The Trustees of Reservations, said the conservancy’s properties on Chappaquiddick were closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday because of erosion and flooding.
“At the entrance to Norton Point, we lost a long section of primary dune, a little over a hundred yards of that large 15-foot primary dune,” Mr. Kennedy told the Gazette Monday. “We had a lot of trail flooding, and then of course it instantly froze. We had some additional beach erosion on Norton Point, where it carved away the beach and the trail ended up in the water. We’re in the process of moving that trail to get vehicles past.”
Mr. Kennedy said the Trustees also had to close Cape Pogue because of flooding on the causeway from the Dike Bridge to East Beach.
“The water was so high it drove ice floes on top of the causeway and it blocked the vehicle trail,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We’ve been slowly moving the ice so we can get a vehicle trail opened.”
He said he hoped to have all the Chappaquiddick properties reopened by Tuesday.
He said conditions were extraordinary when the wind and waves were at their worst on Friday afternoon into Saturday.
“During the height of the storm I was watching the Chappy ferry web cams,” said Mr. Kennedy. “We saw white water, breakers actually in the parking lot on the Chappy side. The water was just incredibly high and it was being driven from the north.”
Elsewhere on the Island there were numerous cases of frozen and burst pipes that kept plumbers hopping. “It’s been terrible,” said William Mueller, who owns William Mueller Plumbing and Heating in Vineyard Haven. “A lot of needless freeze ups, due to the fact that people just don’t protect their piping from the cold as they should. There has been a lot of heating system failures, hence there’s been a lot of freeze ups. It’s been impossible to keep up with the demand, but we are doing our best.”
Among the facilities that experienced some pipe failures was the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Principal Sara Dingledy said old infrastructure was part of the problem. “Our facilities team was working really hard over the weekend,” she said. “There were two leaks coming from pipe bursts in the science wing that we were able to address pretty quickly, one because we had custodial staff in, and one because the teacher was in the room.”
Late Sunday night, the custodial staff and the Oak Bluffs fire department responded to a pressure issue with a sprinkler system located near a school heating system.
All the problems were fixed and the water cleaned up in time for school Monday morning.
“It was actually pretty amazing how we were able to clean it up and open school,” said Ms. Dingledy.
By late Monday afternoon, the air temperature reached 41 degrees and was expected to break 50 degrees later in the week, according to weather service meteorologists.
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