Snow Falls on the Point

It was almost spring here last week, and then this happens... *Sigh* ... I guess it really is still February after all. Overnight the trees and beaches of the Point were blanketed in an inch or two of the white stuff. At this moment as I write, it's still drifting lazily from the sky. It would be pretty ... if I weren't already finished with winter.

Got an email this week from a resident who was shocked to see how much erosion the dunes have suffered over this winter. I think it's a combination of the high seas and the high winds, pushing and pulling at the dunes from both directions. On the plus side, the Seaway beach *looks* nicer to sit upon. On the negative side, there's only so much dune left to replenish that beach with, before it's eaten away entirely. Still hoping Mother Nature brings back sand when Spring shifts the currents and winds.

Where is Spring? Maybe the groundhog was right after all... darn....

February Snows

Over the weekend we ran into neighbors who were visiting to get away from snowy northern Massachusetts. "56 inches!" she said they had in their yard. The Cape hasn't gotten that much snow. Yet.

It did snow all day long on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, the sun was back out although the temperature still hovered around ten degrees. The weatherman promises that it will warm up this weekend. We'll see.

Despite the freezing wind, we walked down to the beach on Thursday with our stir-crazy dogs and let them run on the sand. The tides continue to be high, so there wasn't much actual snow on the beach, having been washed away by the recent tide. There was a thick layer of ice along all the rocks and atop the jetties, but no icebergs in the ocean, and no slush washing ashore.

As I write this, there is still a layer of snow on the ground but if it gets as warm as predicted it may be a memory by Monday.

Good-bye (and Good Riddance) to January!

Goodbye January, Hello February! The coast has been battered in the last week by storms, and it isn't even a full moon. This photo is of the OMP stairway at the far end of Strandway near the river - you can see the bottom step is a different color, as it has been covered with sand up until recently. You can also see the high tide mark there, right up against the snow fence and stairwell. That line of shells and seaweed is officially known as the "strandline" or the "strandway", thus the name of the street... just a little tidbit I learned while chaperoning a school field trip to a local beach one fall to do environmental studies...

Yesterday was sunny and bright (if not particularly warm) and we walked along the shore past the Pleasant Road Beach and down as far as we could before the ocean made it impassable. It's not just our stretch of beach that has suffered the erosion, if that makes anyone feel better. The ocean is buffetting the seagrass all along the coast, the waves licking right into the dunes. Hopefully the winds and currents will shift this spring and bring some of the new sandbars back onto shore for us...