It has been forty years since an Atlantic hurricane formed in November and made landfall somewhere in the United States. But one day after the US midterm elections on November 8th, 2022, a low-end Category One hurricane named Nicole landed with 75 mph winds in Volusia County, FL. The storm left much property damage and caused beach erosion from Broward County to St. Augustine and beyond.
Florida had experienced beach erosion from Category Four Ian, which made landfall on the Gulf Coast a few weeks ago with severe beach decay and other impacts to the Atlantic Coast.
Homes toppled into the sea, and roads collapsed in Daytona Beach due to Nicole's heavy rain and storm surge damage. Five people lost their lives in central Florida.
A researcher who used to serve on the city of Miami’s Climate Resilience Committee called the storm a “warning shot.”
“(It was) a unique situation that brought a lot of elevated sea level across a huge swath of the coast,” Patrick Rynne, the CEO of Waterlust, said.
Rynne earned a doctorate degree in Applied Marine Physics—a fancy way of saying he’s an expert on where and how water moves.
Rynne said to see so much surface flooding and beach erosion from a storm that wasn’t even a direct hit is an indication that more work needs to be done to mitigate against costly and potentially deadly rising seas.
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“Our power plants, our stormwater plants, and wastewater treatment plants are often in the most vulnerable locations,” Rynne said. “I think any time we have a storm like this, where it is very eye-opening to look at the damage, we need to hold our elected officials accountable saying, ‘Hey, we need to be putting in work, not just for the next 10 years but the next 20, 30, 100 years.’”
The next 20, 30, 100 years. That made me LOL.
The article included an NOAA link on living shorelines and how they can help protect coastal communities in Florida and every coastal community across the country from extreme flooding. The problem is that our coastal communities are heavily developed with the most critical infrastructure, such as wastewater treatments and power plants located in vulnerable areas. Where would the land, lagoons, and wetlands come from, as those areas have long been paved?
A living shoreline is a protected, stabilized coastal edge made of natural materials such as plants, sand, or rock. Unlike a concrete seawall or other hard structure, which impede the growth of plants and animals, living shorelines grow over time.
Natural infrastructure solutions like living shorelines provide wildlife habitat, as well as natural resilience to communities near the waterfront. Living shorelines are sometimes referred to as nature-based, green, or soft shorelines. They are an innovative and cost-effective technique for coastal management.
The beach's width rather than the dunes' height is also critical.
Beaches and sand dunes are critical to protecting coastal communities from storm surge, but the specifics of how different dune shapes, dimensions, and qualities influence their protective capabilities during storms are not fully understood. A recent NOAA-supported study suggests that greater protection from erosion and flooding is provided by a wide beach rather than the height or width of the dune. A wide, lower dune performed better during longer moderate storms while a tall, narrow dune provided more protection during intense storms, highlighting the importance of dune width in preventing erosion and height in preventing overtopping. Overtopping allows water to reach areas behind the dune, also known as overwash or inundation, potentially causing damage to the dune and homes.
Scientists at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Oregon State University used XBeach, a model that simulates dune erosion during a storm. They used pre- and post-storm observations of actual storms to ensure accurate model results. This approach is very useful for evaluating beach and dune shapes under specific storms to inform beach and dune management options such as adding sand to the beach or dune, known as nourishment, or adding sand fencing, or planting beach grasses to influence where sand is captured.
The authors ran different “synthetic storm scenarios” based on conditions observed during 2016 Hurricane Matthew where the storm lasted for longer (i.e. increased storm duration) and the storm surge was higher or lower. Simulations found that, especially as storm surge increased, a sand fence placed on the sea-ward side of a natural dune traps sand to create a smaller dune. Although small, this sand fence dune delays waves from reaching the further-inland natural dune, as waves must first erode the sand fence dune. This reduces the overall exposure time of the natural dune to waves during a storm and increases the likelihood that it avoids overtopping.
Fox weather reported on the expensive condos and homes on Daytona Beach. The county condemned them for human occupancy.
The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said inspectors declared 24 hotels and condos unsafe and ordered evacuations due to structural concerns because of beach erosion. Additionally, at least 25 single-family homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea were evacuated after being declared structurally unsound.
Drone video showed homes teetering on the edge of falling into the ocean on Daytona Beach Shores. By Thursday morning, Nicole's ferocious waves washed entire chunks of A1A Highway in Flagler County. On the famous Daytona Beach Boardwalk, the crashing waves and surges were too much for part of the infrastructure.
Downed trees and power lines now mingle with washed-out roads and beach erosion in areas that Hurricane Ian had already damaged.
In late September, Ian caused extensive damage up and down Florida's Atlantic Coast. Nicole was the knockout punch for many areas.
It was a worst-case scenario, according to Daytona Beach Shores Police Chief Michael Fowler, but the community is resilient and will stay supportive in the weeks and months to come.
"We are what you call ‘totaled’ in the backyard," said David Marsh, who runs the maintenance at the Ocean Court Hotel, which was evacuated along Daytona Beach Shores. "I'm in jeopardy of losing my pool, which was after Ian, I still had life of saving the pool. Now, Nicole has taken that life away from the pool. That pool has to be destroyed."
Someone will need to pay for the millions of dollars of damage to the Florida coastline. Those million-dollar views are damn expensive. But the GQP has a stranglehold on Florida politics, and the fossil fuel industry will not be the ones that pay. The little gal and guy across the country will rebuild Florida. There will come a time when the United States has no choice but to surrender enormous swathes of Florida to the sea. That time is not now (unless the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica collapses soon). Florida is too powerful to allow that to happen politically. Still, sea-level rise, with its multiple weapons of destruction, will level or topple expensive real estate from one end of the country to the other.
We can't keep rebuilding in the same areas and watch them wash away and flatten over and over during hurricane season. Sea level rise is only one piece of climate breakdown; we are and continue to have multiple climate disasters across the country; we are a war-loving people with a defense industry consuming most of our wealth. As a result, there will be only a little coin to go around. I call this collapse, and we are not doing anything about that either, not enough to deal with the enormity of the problem anyway.
Raw drone footage of Daytona Beach damage.