Kim Corbi, a lifelong resident of Ocean City, N.J., is accustomed to seeing dunes. But not where she saw them yesterday.
Some of the dunes designed to protect the town from the anger and caprice of the Atlantic Ocean had been transported to residents' front yards. The sand was driven landward by relentless howling wind, rain, and crashing waves from the worst coastal storm to pound the Jersey Shore in more than a decade.
"It's the first time I've seen anything like this in a while," said Corbi, who works at a Wawa store on 34th Street.
A coastal flood watch remains in effect until 10 a.m. today, but this morning's high tide was not expected to be as damaging. Forecasters have called for rain to end this morning, with winds backing off later today.
The nor'easter, spawned from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida, erased significant chunks of the Shore's eroding beaches.
The state said it would survey the damage on Monday, but beach experts and preliminary evidence suggest that the losses will be even more significant than those from last month's storm. "When you've got that much wave energy, it's going to be very ugly," said James Eberwine, marine specialist at the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly.
He said the nor'easter generated the highest wave ever recorded at the buoy 30 miles off Cape May - 26.7 feet.
No serious weather-related injuries were reported, but the Coast Guard officially called off the search for three fishermen missing since Wednesday night.
Emergency officials said that overall Shore damage was not catastrophic, but for residents of beach towns, it was a brutal siege.
Starting around daybreak Wednesday, they were hounded by persistent, powerful winds from the northeast that incited beach-eating waves and kept back-bay areas from draining.
In Ocean City yesterday, the areas between Bay and West Avenues were completely flooded, and punishing winds rattled street signs and swayed traffic lights.
Winds gusted to 59 m.p.h. at Atlantic City and reached 40 m.p.h. at Philadelphia International Airport.
Eberwine, who lives in Absecon, said that South Jersey was perfectly positioned for the highest winds. "I couldn't sleep," he said. "Things were banging against the house."
Virtually every building in the Sea Isle City business district was waterfront property yesterday as water covered Landis Avenue.
You could ride "Jet Skis out the front door," said Stewart Farrell, director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College, near Atlantic City, who traveled the coastline to survey the damage.
Mike Monichetti, owner of Mike's Seafood in Sea Isle City, said his shop was surrounded by 10 inches of water at dawn. At a nearby dockside restaurant he owns, rising water ruined stoves, fryers, grills, freezers, and refrigerators.
"You sit there helpless," Monichetti said. But, he added, you "can't stop Mother Nature."
Up to four feet of water covered the parking lot behind the borough hall in downtown Avalon. Elsewhere in Cape May County, which evidently was the hardest hit, numerous bridges, roads, and schools were closed. Cape May recorded its highest tidal reading - 8.21 feet - since February 1998.
This was not what Linda Korbus, 32, had in mind when she agreed to house-sit for a friend in Strathmere.
"I thought this would be a fun place to stay for a few weeks to help out a friend," said Korbus, who lives in Georgia. "But when you get to a point where the porch furniture might wash away, it's not much fun anymore."
A Strathmere beach-fill project completed in the spring probably spared the beach significant damage, Farrell said.
Strathmere's and other beaches from Island Beach State Park to Cape May Point were hammered in October.
In Harvey Cedars, that nor'easter chiseled off 100 feet of beachfront for the length of the town, according to a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection survey.
The Army Corps of Engineers may have to delay next week's launch of a scheduled beach-restoration operation by several days, said corps spokeswoman Sarah M. Rivette.
It was not yet known how the Long Beach Island strands fared or how other recent corps projects in Cape May and Cape May Meadows withstood the storm.
The state Department of Environmental Protection plans to survey the beaches on Monday and issue an assessment, said agency spokeswoman Elaine Makatura.
But it appears that beaches in the Atlantic City Inlet area, Ventnor, and Margate took big hits, said Ed Conover, Atlantic County's emergency management director.
In Avalon "north of 21st Street, at low tide there was no beach," Farrell said. In Sea Isle City, the ocean overran the sand at three different points.
Strathmere was the exception, he said.
"There was no breach or overwash," Farrell said. But some of the freshly placed sand did wind up inland - on houses that suddenly looked as if they had been dipped in batter.
"They're breaded with the sand from the fill," he said.
Contact staff writer Anthony R. Wood at 610-313-8210 or twood@phillynews.com.
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