Duxbury Beach Getting Some Jose Surf

Duxbury Beach got in on the Tropical Storm Warning for a while during Jose, so we rolled up last Thursday to see how angry Mother Nature was.

Seas were getting ugly on Tuesday, and they were still ominous on Saturday. That's an 8 tide storm, a very bad thing for coastlines (the No-Name Storm/Halloween Gale/Perfect Storm of 1991 was a 10 tide storm), and Duxbury was very lucky to be on Jose's fringe.

Duxbury Beach gets pummeled in storms, so the residents are rarely caught slippin'. DBC...

Jose hung around off Nantucket for a while, and her huge wind field (tropical cyclones expand in size once they reach cooler waters) made it past Duxbury.

And now, down below, some amateurish video...

There are scholarly articles which say that Duxbury Beach, in her present location on Cape Cod Bay and with the slope of her coastline, can't really generate waves higher than 5 or 6 feet. I won't disagree with scientists more than I have to, and admit that I could be wrong on a technicality, but I have seen ten foot+ waves during the Blizzard of '78 and the Halloween Gale.

Duxbury Beach was still getting heavy rain and 50 MPH gusts on Thursday, which is why a lot if these shots were taken behind houses and crouched under stairways

The cottage that was here before this house is famous for washing into Ocean Road North during the Halloween Gale. It is locally legendary because a glass of wine mitakenly left on the cottage's kitchen table during storm prep was still on the table- unspilled- after the storm.

A fence with almost no chance at all of surviving the waves coming over the wall.

Your fearless reporter was in town three hours before high tide, and had to flee before a waning new moon tide blocked off the neighborhood. 1:30 high tides in Duxbury and a 2:45 school bus rendezvous in New Bedford are incompatible.

Duxbury Beach is stormy enough that kids there used to/may still do Death Runs. Death Runs involve waiting for stormy seas to hit the seawall, dropping yourself onto the beach as a wave recedes, running as far as possible before the next wave comes and pulling yourself back onto the seawall before the next wave hits. 

The child who painted these rocks was most likely not thinking "These rocks will someday be the only bright colors in an otherwise slate-grey hurricane article from some obscure regional publication," but just look how things shook out.

The next three are from Maryellen Federici.

Jose knocked over one of the Don't Run Over My Kids fluorescent lawn jockey dudes.

Brant Rock Jose Surf

When people who like watching big surf see a North wind blowing, they start thinking Brant Rock. The Rock has more northerly bearing than most neighborhood beaches, and they really take their lumps on the back end of a nor'easter... or a near-miss hurricane.

Generally, Scituate gets it worse with East winds, Duxbury holds the crown with NE winds and Brant Rock gets her worst damage with North winds.

Sometimes I get out of the car, sometimes I shoot between cycles of the wiper blades 

This is about two hours before high tide on Thursday, so things got worse.

Brant Rock gets her name from Brant Geese, which used to rest on those rocks back in map-drawing time. A few local areas are named for wildlife. Gurnet Point got her name because someone influential thought that it looked like a place in England where he used to catch Gurnett Fish.

This is where all the splashover water comes from which eventually washes downhill and floods the Esplanade 

Marsh Vegas aint no joke when Poseidon has been angered by the ways of men.