Breakthrough: An Excerpt

Weather Forecast

Breakthrough

Late in December 1986, a few early winter storms sent huge whitecaps hurtling against North Beach’s outer shore. Observers at the Chatham Lighthouse overlook could clearly see the roiling, spewing breakers foaming above the low dune line like white icing on a sandy cake. There were occasional washovers which flattened vegetation and swept away dunes, but they were temporary. When the sky cleared and seas calmed, the beach remained more or less unscathed.

Later, the winter turned into the worst of the decade, perhaps in half a century. More than 40 inches of snow fell, and the Cape, especially the outer Cape, shut down completely for days at a time. Most of the effects were, however, temporary; snow melted and power came back on. But one particular storm, mild in contrast to what came later, will nonetheless go down in history as the progenitor of an event which would be felt for years to come.

There was snow early on the day of Friday, January 2, 1987. The air had turned bitter and winds whipped around from the northeast. All week the tides had been extremely high due to a celestial phenomenon called syzygy, an alignment of the Earth, sun and moon that occurs every nine years. This year there was an added factor, a concurrent alignment of several planets, which happens only once in every 35 years.

Syzygy, along with a full moon tide, accounted for perhaps two to three feet in extra tidal height that day. By early morning, a full-fledged northeaster, packing sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (with gusts of 68 miles per hour recorded at the National Weather Service station on Morris Island), added a storm surge of eight to 12 feet.

Breakers 10 to 12 feet high crashed over the narrow strip of North Beach opposite the lighthouse. High tide arrived at 1 p.m., and a crowd gathered at the overlook to watch as the Atlantic surged across the approximately 100-yard-wide beach and flowed into Chatham Harbor.

Several other portions of the beach were similarly inundated by the January 2 storm. But at low tide the following day everyone in Chatham saw, for the first time in decades, a permanent channel linking the inner harbor with the Atlantic, isolating a three-and-a-half mile section of the beach.

I traveled down the beach early Saturday morning, at dawn, with Lieutenant Wayne Love of the Chatham police department. As we rode along the outer beach in the department’s four-wheel drive pickup, he pointed out the various washovers and what had been high, solid-looking dunes torn apart by the storm. Arriving opposite the lighthouse, which still threw its warning beacon seaward against the cloud-shrouded early morning sky, we found a meandering stream in the center of a vast, football field-sized washout. Approximately 18 feet wide, a foot or so deep, the channel seemed natural, nonthreatening, even beautiful in its undulating simplicity. Water flowed through at a good clip, but it would not have been unthinkable for someone in waders or even a good pair of boots to ford across.

Love had for years overseen the law enforcement aspect of the beach, which included keeping the various trails maintained so beach buggies and other off-road vehicles could travel the length of the beach. It was a popular place, not only with those who owned camps here, but also for weekenders, many of whom came nearly every weekend of the year and were just as much a part of the beach as the beach grass and shallow ponds. Over the years, Love saw the beach move around a lot, and he knew something significant had happened. The magnitude of the story didn’t hit me for a week or so, when I began educating myself about the barrier beach and listening to people like Love, who had seen geology happen right in front of their eyes.

Immediately there was speculation that the gap would close up with the next tide. Yet water continued to flow at both high and low tide, scouring the channel more at each exchange. Several days after the breakthrough occurred, Harbormaster Peter Ford took an aerial view of the beach and said a mushroom-shaped plume of sand extended 150 yards into the harbor from the cut, and a bar was building up on the outside, classic signs of a nascent inlet.

Recognizing that the new cut could be the one predicted by Dr. Graham Giese in his 1978 report, and realizing the potential impact, the selectmen held a hastily called meeting the Monday after the storm to discuss possible remedial measures.

Ford told me after the meeting that "the consensus of the town fathers is to let nature take its course. There will be no preventive measures." This hands-off policy was to later become a key issue in the controversy surrounding the shoreline erosion that began in earnest ten months later. But Ford summed up most people’ s attitude in the days immediately following the initial breakthrough when he said, when asked about the possibility of the cut closing: "I wouldn’t put five cents on it either way."

Within two weeks it was clear that the cut was rapidly establishing itself as an inlet and wasn’t going to close up immediately, as some thought. Scouring had produced a 500-foot-wide channel with respectable depths at both low and high tides, enough to allow the 42-foot fishing vessel Asylum to pass through at half tide. Almost overnight fishermen switched from the 45-minute trip to the Atlantic via the old Chatham Bars inlet, between North Beach and Monomoy, to the more direct and time-saving cut-through, just a few minutes’ steaming time from the fish pier at Aunt Lydia’s Cove.

Andrew Harding's Lane in mid 1987.

The shortcut wasn’t without hazards; the current ran six to seven knots and the channel itself was treacherous and could change configuration in the time it took to complete a day’s fishing. Fishermen, however, aren’t known for their trepidation, and most decided the time saved was worth the risk. The fact that there were no serious injuries or accidents in those early days, when the breach was still in its early stages of formation, says something about the navigational skills of Chatham’s fishermen, and the extreme care and caution practiced by local boaters.

As soon as he was informed of the situation, Dr. Giese visited the scene and started taking measurements and photographs. In late January, Dr. Giese and Dr. David Aubrey, also of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, proposed a study of the breakthrough’s effect on tidal ranges, salinity levels and the distribution of sediment throughout the system. The idea was to observe the much-described barrier beach process in action, and develop a computer model that would allow scientists to accurately predict when breaks would occur in other barrier beaches.

Giese installed computerized gauges to measure changes in tide level at the fish pier, at Meetinghouse Pond in Orleans — the head of Pleasant Bay — as well as offshore instruments to measure wave and current strength. Eventually funded by Chatham to the tune of $26,000, the study used aerial photographs, shoreline profiles from six locations from the Cow Yard Landing to Morris Island, and transit measurements at the ends of North and South Beach taken from the lighthouse. The results would be useful to the town in the future in developing a management plan for the Chatham Harbor waters and shoreline, Dr. Giese said.

Through January and February, the area was battered by two more northeast storms, with huge snowfalls and winds up to 80 miles per hour. At first the breach widened by as much as 1,000 feet in two weeks; but as it became more established and organized, the rate of growth slowed to perhaps 100 or so feet per week, as a mean average. In early March the breach was 1,710 feet wide, with a main channel 20 feet deep. Dr. Giese, at the time, was guarded in his predictions about the fate of the cut-through, but left little doubt about where his attention was focused. "We can’t say at this moment for certain that this particular break is the one that will stay open," he said. "But we can say that the characteristics associated with this break indicate the conditions are right."