The Calm Before The Storm

The Duxbury DPW blocking off the opening in the seawall is an omen signifying the arrival of Autumn.

Duxbury Beach, 9/4/16... I'm pretty sure that this is surf from Gaston, but Hermine is helping with the wind.

They'd better take Ol' Glory down soon, as it really has nowhere to go but Off-Pole when the wind increases.

This is pretty much Poseidon starting to steal your stairs. He got interrupted, but he plans to return.

Poseidon won't be getting these stairs. I was hoping to get a shot of somebody boarding up the windows, but Duxbury is fairly North of where the tropical storm is, and they can do a last-minute job if things get threatening.

Astronomically low tide,.. the surf is worked up, but not enough to reach the seawall. That's what night-stalker types on the beach call an "Ankle Breaker."

Tropical storms make for good kite weather. Sorry for the blurry pic, and that's Manomet in the background.

Much Needed Rain Coming Friday Morning

Massachusetts has been in quite a drought, and we have a rain deficit of several inches. That's not going to be a problem today, as soaking rains are set to enter the region.

From the National Weather Service:

BARNSTABLE (and PLYMOUTH) COUNTY:

...FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS EVENING...

THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH CONTINUES FOR

* PORTIONS OF SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND...
INCLUDING THE FOLLOWING AREAS...IN SOUTHEASTERN
MASSACHUSETTS...BARNSTABLE MA...DUKES MA...EASTERN PLYMOUTH
MA...NANTUCKET MA...NORTHERN BRISTOL MA...SOUTHERN BRISTOL
MA...SOUTHERN PLYMOUTH MA AND WESTERN PLYMOUTH MA. IN RHODE
ISLAND...BLOCK ISLAND RI...BRISTOL RI...EASTERN KENT RI...
NEWPORT RI...NORTHWEST PROVIDENCE RI...SOUTHEAST PROVIDENCE
RI...WASHINGTON RI AND WESTERN KENT RI.

* THROUGH THIS EVENING

* RAIN MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES IN RHODE ISLAND AND SOUTHEAST
MASSACHUSETTS. RAINFALL TOTALS OF 1 TO 2 INCHES ARE
FORECAST...WITH 2 TO 4 INCH AMOUNTS POSSIBLE IN LOCALLY HEAVY
DOWNPOURS. LOCATIONS NEAR THE SOUTH COAST...CAPE COD AND THE
ISLANDS ARE MOST LIKELY TO RECEIVE THE HIGHEST RAINFALL TOTALS.

* SIGNIFICANT URBAN FLOODING IS POSSIBLE INCLUDING ROADS AND
UNDERPASSES THAT ARE PRONE TO FLOODING IN HEAVY RAIN. SOME
SMALL STREAMS MAY ALSO RISE OUT OF THEIR BANKS.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A FLASH FLOOD WATCH MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD
TO RAPID AND LIFE THREATENING FLOODING. BE PREPARED. IF YOU LIVE
OR WORK IN AN AREA PRONE TO FLOODING...KNOW A SAFE PLACE TO GO IF
FLOODING OCCURS OR IF A FLASH FLOOD WARNING IS ISSUED.

DRIVERS SHOULD PLAN TO AVOID FLOODED ROADS AND HAVE AN ALTERNATE
ROUTE AVAILABLE.

STAY TUNED TO LATER FORECASTS AND BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION
SHOULD FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS BE ISSUED

The rain should start this morning, and clear off the Cape by the afternoon. We're looking at anywhere between a half inch and 4 inches of rain. Tropical rainstorms (not a tropical storm) are fickle girls, and you never know where the bounty will be until it falls.

This won't erase our rain deficit. In heavy rains, much of the rain is lost to runoff, once the ground becomes saturated.

Your lawns, flowers and vegetables are already doing their happy dance. The person paying $3000 a week to rent a Cape cottage? Maybe not so much.

Here's the radar shot from 6:45 AM Friday.

Great White Shark Sighting Just Off Of Duxbury Beach

My man C.L. Smooth was at White Horse Beach for this picture, but that sign may need to go up off Duxbury Beach this morning...

It's swim at you own risk time in Deluxebury, as an as-yet-unconfirmed sighting of a Great White Shark went down off of Ocean Road North this morning.

The sighting was made by a boater. I could not confirm if it was a more sea-wary Fisherman type of boater. Either way, there's a 10-15 foot fish close enough to shore that the witness was able to assign a street name to his report.

Many fish are mistaken for the Great White. Basking Sharks are common off Duxbury Beach, and usually show up around this time of year, too. They are actually larger than Great Whites, and an inexperienced observer or even a good one who got a hurried look at it could make a classification mistake. They eat nothing but plankton.

If you can see the dorsal fin, here's how you tell a Great White Shark from a Basking Shark. The GWS fin is pointier, like a surfboard, and has a sharp tip. The dorsal fin of a Basking Shark is much more rounded, and looks like the end of an ironing board. The dorsal fin of the Basking Shark will also flop around limply as the shark turns in the water. The GWS, on the other hand, is always on that Cialis tip.

The sighting could also be an Ocean Sunfish, which can get up to 10 feet or so. The video with the Boston guy cursing at a sea monster involved a sunfish.

Dolphins and even whales can also be mistaken for a GWS, and are common enough in Duxbury's waters.

Also, keep in mind that the guy who is telling you about Basking Sharks and Sunfish is sitting comfortably onshore in Bourne. The guy who actually saw the fish in question is saying "Great White Shark."

Either way, the Duxbury Harbormaster is advising you to stay out of the waters off of Duxbury this morning. He sent some boats out to investigate the sighting, but he found nothing. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy did not detect this shark on their tagged-shark detection buoys.

As my Doctor told me once.... "It's the law of the sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. After that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."

We have several reporters embedded in the region, and will update you when we have some more information.

Be careful out there, my friends. This magazine can not afford to lose any readers.

UPDATE.... he's hanging around, he just set off the shark detector buoy at 2:42 PM today.

Fun Fish Facts: Bluefish

Bluefish and Striped Bass are the two favorite fish of the Bay State surfcaster. We're going to have a look at both fish over the course of this week. We're not experts, but we'll try to give you a good working knowledge of our subjects. We'll proceed in an abecedarian fashion.

Bluefish are the sole (pardon the fish pun) members of the Pomatomidae family. They are distantly related but biologically distinct from Gnomefish. They are known by various names, be it "Shad" in Africa, "Tailor" in Australia and "Elf" on the US West Coast. No, I've never heard it called "elf" either, but this column has a prominent East Coast bias.

You can find the Bluefish in almost any ocean. They do avoid a few places (they avoid much of the Pacific, and the Atlantic between Florida and northern South America) for reasons that only Bluefish know. They migrate heavily. The Blues who you eat all summer spend their winters off the Florida coast. They spawn off of North Carolina. They arrive in Massachusetts by June, and are usually gone for the most part by some time in October.

Bluefish can grow to almost 4 feet long, although 20-25 inches is more of the norm. They can get up to 40 pounds, although anything beyond 20 is exceptional. The Massachusetts state record is a 27 pounder caught by Louis Gordon in 1982 off of Graves Light... way the heck out on Boston Harbor.

The IGFA world record is a 31+ pounder caught off of Cape Hatteras, NC. Check him out right here.... he looks like he could bite off a human head.

Bluefish work in schools, and some schools are very large. One school I saw written about covered 10,000 football fields. They migrate in schools, and concentrate in schools at certain areas. Young ones are known as Snappers.

Bluefish live about 9 years or so, and they are hard-core breeders. Some studies suggest multiple breeding seasons. Stocks dwindled in the 1980s, but management raised the numbers to healthy levels by 2007 or so. 92 million pounds were harvested in 1986, while 7 million was harvested in 1999. Our most recent 5 year average was 13 million pounds. 80% of Bluefish that are caught are caught by recreational anglers. The only saltwater fish who is fished for more by recreational anglers is the Striped Bass.

The Bluefish sports a baby's momma-like disposition, and will bite anything that gets in his path. They, and some species of ant that I read about somewhere, are the only non-humans who kill for fun reasons other than predation, mating, protecting their young, and territoriality. They eat any sort of bait fish. Bluefish suppers include menhaden, sardines, shrimp, squid, mackerel, anchovies, jack, and fisherman fingers.

The gangsta style of the bluefish leaves them few willing enemies in the ocean, but things that will mess with them include seals, sharks, tuna, sea lions, billfish, dolphins and others. I'd guess that humans kill the most Bluefish, followed by seals.

Bluefish are one of the very few fish that a landlubber can watch in action without viewing a documentary. You get this benefit via the Bluefish Blitz, which is when a school of Bluefish chase a school of prey (in Massachusetts, this usually involves Mackerel) close to shore and pins them along the coast. They then close in and just maul the poor bait fish in a feeding frenzy. Bluefish, for some reason, will kill long after they've eaten their fill.

Mackerel will beach themselves rather than be devoured by the Blue Meanies. The waters literally churn like rapids, and the seas flow red with the blood of the Unfortunate.

I saw a guy in the 1970s who apparently had great confidence in his hip waders walk into a blitz off Duxbury Beach, dip a friggin' laundry basket into the water and come up with a Bluefish and some Mackerel. He then put a hook in each bait fish and reeled in additional Blue with this regular-bait method. That's a real, capital-M Man, kids.

The only Bluefish attack on a non-fisherman involved a girl in Spain who may have wandered into the edge of a blitz. The shark attack on Truro in the 1990s was initially blamed on a Bluefish by some people.

If you don't want to risk a bad fish-bite wound, try using 40 pound test fishing line. The Blue is a muscle torpedo, and he puts up a ferocious fight. He can bite through weak line without any great effort. Handle a beached Bluefish with care, as he is a sore loser and is more than capable of taking a fingertip off of a sloppy or careless fisherman.

Bluefish are known as a gamy fish. As we said, it's a muscle torpedo, and that leads to what chefs call "personality." Bluefish have a time-sensitive compound that kicks in 3 days after death that makes it very, very gamy. You want to shop local for fish, and especially Bluefish.  Patronize someone who can tell you when the fish that they're selling you was caught. The larger the fish, the stronger the gamy flavor.

There are ways to cut this flavor. Bluefish meat has muddy/reddish areas that are extra oily and lead to a stronger flavor. Fishermen sometimes cut this part out before consuming or even storing the meat. Some anglers soak Bluefish meat in milk for an hour to cut the gamy flavor down. You can also make the Bluefish fight stronger-flavored herbs/spices/sauces... in a skillet!

That's all for now. Get out there and get yourself some Bluefish!

Great White Shark Sighting Closes Beaches In Plymouth

Beaches are closed for swimming in Plymouth after a Great White Shark was spotted by a fisherman yesterday.

Manomet Point, which is the sight of the last shark attack in Massachusetts (remember the kayak-eating shark?), scored another shark yesterday. It's like Monomoy West out there!

A lobsterman (Bob Ward) pulling up his pots had a "Hooper drives the boat, Chief" moment when a large porker followed his pot to the surface, perhaps briefly mistaking the moving pot for a seal. He was about a half-mile off of a packed-with-bathers Manomet Point.

He called the local gendarme, and beaches were closed for swimming soon after.

Beaches are also close for swimming today. I'm presently not sure if the beaches themselves are closed.

The Atlantic Shark Conservancy verified the shark's presence, which may or may not mean that the shark spotted was tagged by Dr. Gregory Skomal.

We'll get back to you if the shark eats someone.

Cranberry County Magazine thanks this shark for showing up just after we did our Summer Shark Spectacular article.

Massachusetts Sharks In Our Archives

Eddie Fairweather be havin' fish or dinner!

We've been very Nature-oriented this summer. This pattern will continue, as several ideas we're kicking around involve oysters, foxes, bluefish, owls, stripers and God knows whatever else walks/swims/flies in front of one of our cameras.

You're going to get all of that soon enough, but today we're going to issue a recap/filler article about our toothiest locals. Great White Sharks own the news around here, even though more people are hurt by schnauzers than sharks in Massachusetts.

This will be our tenth article devoted to sharks, not a bad total at all for a publication in a region with an 100 day swimming season.

Rather than make you wade through our archives for some good ol' fashioned Shark Talk, we're going to give you a list of these articles for you to peruse easily from this very location here.

If you get through all of this and still need more Shark in your life, you should probably just open a wound in your skin and jump into the waters off of Monomoy. We probably have a few Shark articles lurking on Cape Cod TODAY or perhaps even AOL, but this is everything for which we'll get paid if you read it.

Apologies in advance if you see us re-telling a few stories or even telling the same story twice with different details. We have several authors on this site, and occasional short circuits will occur.

What If? A Cape Cod Shark Attack Fatality

I'm very much in Mayor Vaughn's camp on this one, as I feel that a fatal Outer Cape shark attack caught on video would end Cape Cod's status as a vacation destination.

We were actually wrong about this, at least as far as we have been able to prove. Sharks have attacked a couple of people in Truro and also said howdy-do to a couple of kayakers in Plymouth. It seemed to have no negative effect at all on the Cape's tourist flow.

Aim high, fall far.

Historical Massachusetts Shark Attacks

If you want to know your odds, you have to get the stats.

Location is everything in this category, too. Someone who had done no research most likely would not be able to guess where our three shark attack fatalities went down in the Bay State.

We branch out to include Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and New York.


Great White Shark Spotted Off Duxbury Beach

This, and the Plymouth attack, brought it all home to the Irish Riviera that sharks are not solely the problem of Cape Cod. You're more likely to be killed by a shark on the bay side of Cape Cod than you are on the ocean side, and the same goes for the South Coast.

This was a brief article, written the instant I heard the news,and more of a warning to my friends and family who live on that beach. If I go to Thanksgiving and have to sit with a one-legged niece with a very personal Duxbury shark attack story, I will very much need my "Well, you should have checked my site updates" guilt-block.

Best line? "Wow, and I thought that Duxbury didn't get Cape traffic."


Ol' Toothy, The Kayak Eating Shark Of The Irish Riviera

We discuss a theory of ours, focusing on the possibility that Cape Cod Bay only had one shark. That's why we named him. We had some theory that he was a rogue, who split away from his posse off Chatham for some reason that probably makes perfectly good sense to a shark.

This theory, like many of my theories, was wildly off-base. Shark tagging and receiver buoys proved me wrong pretty much right away.

I'm pretty sure that this article at one point also included a Stacey-conducted interview with the shark who dumped those two girls out of the kayak off Manomet. We may have had to remove the interview, as the shark's frank talk on race (he prefers white meat) and age (he steals a Mark Leyner joke about brittle-boned/osteoperosis-having old people being crunchier to the shark) would have been  upsetting to a greater portion of our readership.

Best line? "I'm assuming that the shark was male. Boats are girls, Sharks are boys. That's how I roll."

How To Not Get Eaten By A Shark

This is important stuff to know if you plan to go into the water. In short, if it is at all possible to be attacked by a shark, there must exist steps which will lower those odds.

Some advice ("Don't swim where people are fishing") makes sense. Other advice ("Do nothing at all seal-like") we play off as a joke when the advice is actually sound. One ("Swim with people fatter than you") sounds like a joke but was not denied when I approached a nationally-known shark expert for his thoughts about my theory. Yet another ("Be local" ) is true factually, but true in a category with a body of evidence small enough to magnify coincidence.

"Follow these rules, and you'll have mad bread to break up. If not, 17 feet on the wake-up."


Sharks In Cape Cod Bay

Speaking of shark experts, we went to Duxbury  to attend a lecture by shark expert Dr.Gregory Skomal. He's the guy you see on te news, tagging sharks.

We got to ask him all of our stupid questions ("Have you ever met a friendly, seems-to-enjoy-hanging-with-people Great White Sharks?" and "Can you make a Great White Shark do tricks?"), and we got to hear more serous people ask more serious questions.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only journalist on Earth to ask a shark expert, at length, to weigh in on Dr. Hooper's territoriality theory from Jaws. It turns out that true Territoriality involves one shark claiming an area and driving off other sharks, something which isn't happening around here.

Written during a blizzard, I might add.


Where Exactly Do Our Great White Sharks Hang Out?

Dr. Skomal's efforts do give us some amazingly valuable information. We know where they go in the winter, and we also know where they go when they are up here.

This article tells us where sharks were registered as having swam to. It also tells you how many (tagged) sharks are working any particular stretch of coast.

This is another wake-up call for the South Shore and even the North Shore. Sharks show up from Cape Ann to Cape Cod.

Cape Cod holds the title, no doubt. While Plymouth, Scituate and Duxbury combined for 200 shark tag signals, Chatham had over 14,000 in that same period. Granted, Dr. Skomal spends his days tagging off of Chatham and may never have set foot on the South Shore, 14,000 to 200 is a pretty wide gap.


Can Orcas Chase Our Sharks Away?

This was actually our last article. If you're reading this, you most likely read that. It involves yet another theory of mine.

I still think that a robotic Orca could be employed by Outer Cape towns to drive away the sharks. even if it didn't, there must be some cool use for a 40 foot mechanical Killer Whale.


Deep-Sea Surfcasting Methods

I think that this article, concerning inventions we're working on to allow even novice fishermen to make casts out to sea that would fly completely over small towns if they casted towards land, gets into shark-fishing at some point.

Our best idea involves hooking a shark with a chain that is attached to a Jeep. Dr. Skomal somehow was able to avoid my question about a huge shark taking on a Jeep in a tug-o-war.

New England's Worst Sea Monster?

Massachusetts has several sea monsters in her history.

Daniel Webster saw a sea serpent off of Duxbury, and Gloucester had numerous modern serpentine sightings. Moby Dick is tied to us to a small extent, and Jaws is tied to us to a great extent. We are the new, hip place for Great White Sharks to go, and we even had a Killer Whale in town last week. Lovecraft knew what he was doing when he put Arkham in Massachusetts.

However, our nastiest, ickiest sea monster is larger than a Blue Whale, and the only thing on Earth larger than it is a distant cousin of it. 

There's no way to avoid it, as it goes where the ocean pushes it. We have no sensors to detect the presence of it, and we don't know if one is around until people start being injured by the hundreds. 

Bullets don't harm it, a missile would go right through it, it survived an asteroid strike and you can hack it to pieces without lessening the danger it poses. Oh yeah, it's positively dripping with poison. It may also be immortal.

It'd take a shipload of Hit Points to kill one of those, huh? Thankfully, Godzilla incinerated this monster with his nuclear fire-breath in that 1970s movie, right? Wait... what??

It's real???

No...

Yes.

This monster that we speak of is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. The LJM is a species of Cnidarian, a phylum that encompasses the Jellyfish family.

It is prevalent in the northern Atlantic, as it prefers colder water. They can not tolerate warmer waters, and are rarely found below 42 degrees north latitude. They dine on zooplankton, just like other giant creatures do. They are pelagic (open ocean) for most of their lives, but they tend to drift into bays as the currents dictate.

It is the largest known jellyfish, and holds the World's Largest Thing title if you don't count stretched-out Bootlace Worms. Massachusetts holds the world record for LJM (and, thusly, everything else), a feat they performed when a LJM washed ashore in a town that I cant find the name of. If anyone knows, hit me up in the comments.

This Lion's Mane Jellyfish that washed up in Massachusetts was 7 feet across. The tentacles, when stretched out, were over 120 feet long. The largest Blue Whales are about 20 feet shorter. That's a lot of jelly! You'd have to slaughter every character that Charles Schultz ever drew to make a corresponding amount of Peanuts Butter to get a PB&J out of that sucker, and that's before we find a football field's worth of bread to house the whole sandwich.

Most of that length is Tentacle, and each of those tentacles is lined with poisonous barbs that would break off into human skin quite nicely. The barbs get fired off like harpoons any time something- like you- touches the tentacle. The poison, while generally not fatal to a healthy adult, can cause critical burns. A jellyfish has thousands of such tentacles.

Now, something like that floating around in the middle of the ocean isn't much of a problem for most of us, and is just a small part of the general Cowardice that keeps me from doing things like Carnival Cruises or joining the Navy. 

However, there is nothing to stop one of these creatures from washing ashore in Massachusetts. What beach it hit depends entirely on the currents.

from USGS

"Washes ashore in Massachusetts" doesn't mean "one washed up here, once, in 1870." We are well within the range of these things, and they have inflicted mass injury in New England before.

Rye, New Hampshire is a nice place to go beaching. However, it wasn't so nice in July of 2010. A LMJ the size of a trash can lid with 20-25 foot tentacles washed into a group of bathers. Officials attempted to remove it, which only broke it up into innumerable pieces.

This, plus the wave action that breaks jellyfish apart, loosed the barbs from the tentacles, and the sea around Rye was a puddle of pain. The barbs can sting long after the jellyfish is dead, and long after their removal from the host creature.

Thinking that the danger had passed, bathers in Rye went back into the water... water that was filled with microscopic, poisonous, floating barbs. Over 150 people were injured. 

Most of the injuries were minor, because, as bad as it was, swimming into a spread-out infestation of barbs is different than directly contacting a LJM and getting thousands of stings at once. Still, five people needed to be taken to the hospital. The rest were treated on-site with vinegar and baking soda. Old salts swear by meat tenderizer, as well.

As you can see from my handy map of the currents off Massachusetts, had that beast not become trapped in the surf off Rye, it very easily could have moved with the currents down the Massachusetts, visiting Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod...

You won't know that it's here... until the screaming starts. If you see it, it's already too late.

photo by Dan Hershman

July 3rd On Duxbury Beach

'Merica!

Cranberry County Magazine's photographers engage in a little camera fight before the fire gets lit.

Because there was a 9 PM high tide, they had to either light the fire at 7:30 PM or light it at 1:30 AM. This also led to smaller fires. Remember, kids... always give the bonfire enough time to burn itself down to ash before the tide hits it.... otherwise, you get a beach full of charred wood for the rest of July until the tide pushes the debris down to the uninhabited parts of Duxbury Beach.

One thing that stood out... only Duxbury had fires. This was one of the more southernmost fires, and there were no fires north of Killian's (a locally notorious Duxbury Beach party family) on the Duxbury/Marshfield line. Marsh Vegas has put their foot down on bonfires, it seems. They were a Loyalist town during the Revolution, so July 3rd parties must seem like doing tequila shots off of the casket of a loved one. Still, someone should have put a fire up.... shame on you, Green Harbor!

Poorly-timed high tides can't stop the fireworks, babe. Duxbury Beach spends a lot of money on personal-use fireworks. Several people I know there had enough gunpowder to defend Little Round Top if they had to. The whole place on July 3rd sounds like films I used to watch of Beirut during urban battles. It was bad enough that I thought I had PTSD for a little while, but I figured out it was just regular psychopathology.

A different vantage point....

Here's me butchering a shot where God had already spotted me the dusk's early light, the flag, the cute kids, several neighboring bonfires and even the rocket's red glare. I later dropped my camera on the beach somewhere, which- judgng by the quality of my shots- was probably a good thing. Shed no tears for Cranberry County Magazine, though... it was a $27 camera that I had owned for a year.

HAPPY JULY 4TH!

Building Up A Shanty On Duxbury Beach

BEFORE RECONSTRUCTION.... variously known as Old Man Bradford's house or Tai Chi's house, it had been falling into disrepair for decades. You can see the channel dug by storm tides washing through the property

ALSO BEFORE.... The area behind the cottage in question, a meadow that is the lowest-lying place on Duxbury Beach. This picture and the picture above are from a 2007 nor'easter.

DURING.... Shot from Gurnet Road, the shanty has been torn down.

AFTER.... 71 Ocean Road North, reporting for duty. We'll see how this Irish Riviera gentrification job holds up against the nor'easters...

... like this one, with waves hitting the seawall right in front of the new house.

Bonne Chance!

Archives: Duxbury Beach Storm Photos

We've been shifting our photo storage sites around, and have been unearthing various Duxbury Beach storm photos. We'll be sharing them out now and then until we exhaust the supply.

Photographers include Sheila Spellman, Joe Deady, Deborah Deady, Sara Flynn, Pauline Flynn and Samantha Spellman. The girl who owns/used to own the Fairview may also be in the mix.

Almost all of these shot were taken from Ocean Road North on Duxbury Beach.

Almost all of them, you see... this one is on Gurnet Road, approaching Duxbury Beach Park. The Powder Point Bridge is that lack line on the horizon.

Someone who has never seen this picture just rebuilt this cottage into a $1 million house.

Tearing out the storm-damaged back wall on Ocean Road North. 

Heading down the road a bit, to the Brant Rock Esplanade.

A lot of these were published on some Cape Cod rag that we used to write for, and they had less-then-manly photo dimension specifics. When we blow them up so you can actually see them, they get a bit blurry. We apologize, and the fault is ours rather than that of the shutterbugs.

More to come...

Naming Post-Secession Mainland Cape Cod

When the traffic gets bad enough and pols start talking about making residents pay tolls to cross a theoretical third bridge, people who live in the mainland areas of Bourne and Sandwich start getting angry. When that anger boils up enough, you even hear talk of secession.

"We lost any financial benefits from Cape traffic in 1985. Start our own town, demand financial concessions from Cape Cod for the traffic, and dump both bridges into the Canal if the Cape says no" is the general tone of secession talk.

I'm not going to support the "dump the bridges" talk, as it is terrorism and might kill someone. I'm also not here to push Secession. It's a fun conversation piece, and it might get me some site visits, but I'm simply not the man with the answers you'd need if you wanted to get the movement going. I'm not sure how it would be done, nor am I sure if it is even a good idea.

I'll leave those questions for a future article, most likely one written in August when I just took 90 minutes to get through the Belmont Circle rotary. Instead, I will take on something that I am completely capable of doing... naming the post-secession town.

We're going to work from a fictional scenario where Buzzards Bay, Bournedale, Sagamore Beach and Scusset Beach have all broken away from Bourne, Sandwich and perhaps even whatever parts of Wareham and Plymouth (why not go for everything east of Red Brook and all of the Great Herring Pond area?) we could get our hands on.

The resultant bow-tie shaped town would need many things, but the main thing it would need is a name. We've kicked around a few, and we'll share some of them with you now. There's no ranking, even if the staff have their own personal favorites.

- Gridlock

"Gridlock" would be a form of protest. It would speak of the new town's plight, while concurrently scaring away tourists who would otherwise clutter up our roads. It would be easy to remember, it would gain us amazing name-recognition value, and might invite investment.

"Gridock" was chosen from among several staff suggestions for traffic-related town names, edging out equally awesome but less serious contenders such as "Jam City, Massachusetts, " "Road Rage, Massachusetts," "Slow Lane, Massachusetts" and "Bumper-to-Bumper, Massachusetts."

"Bumper-to-Bumper" would have a sort of Stratford-upon-Avon sound to it, and would pair us with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" as the only town names in the state with hyphens in them. We'd also join them as the only town names with Prepositions in them.


- Ripton

"Ripton" was the name of a fictional Berkshires town that an awesome western Massachusetts pol (Editor's note: it was a UMass-Amherst professor) invented. He was able to apply for grants, and even got Ripton included in the state budget. He did Ripton's work so well, he was able to obtain state funds for the fictional community. He gave the money back, as he was less interested in Fraud and more interested in pointing out that the state government lacks Western Massachusetts awareness.

Anyhow, my financial adviser- who I will admit up front is in jail at the moment- tells me that he's "pretty sure" that state funds were collected and set aside for Ripton, and that if a Ripton should suddenly appear, they would be owed both the original sum of money and any interest accrued since Ripton's 1980s inclusion in the state budget.


- Capeside

Not a lot of TV shows were set on Cape Cod and the Islands (I can only think of one other one, Wings), but one of the best was Dawson's Creek. I don't think that I saw enough DC to tell you what it was actually about, but it launched the careers of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and that other kid.

If you were a child of the 1990s and didn't arc a few to Katie Holmes... nice restraint, brother.

The "Capeside" town scenes in Dawson's Creek were actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and any Massachusetts scenery used in the show was filmed in Oak Bluffs. However, why not steal the name? As you can see from the entries above and below this one in the article, it's not like we have any better ideas.

"Capeside" edges out several other fictional town names that we wished to steal from TV, movies or literature, including "Amity," "Crabapple Cove," "Dunwich, "Wallencamp," "Peyton Place," "Gotham City," "Atlantis," "Jerusalem's Lot," "Dudleyville" and "Quahog."

- Wutham

Pronounced what-ham, it would be a goof on neighboring Wareham. We'd spell it "Whatham," but we wish to avoid GPS errors with Waltham.

We'd need Marion to change their name to Whoham in order to complete the trinity.


- Sagamore

"Sagamore" is probably the logical choice, although it would be complicated in that the actual village of Sagamore is on the Cape side of the Canal.

We might have to name the town "Scusset Beach," which would force us to  negotiate something with what would most likely be a very hostile Sandwich town government.

The "Scusset Beach" thing would be unfair to the Buzzards Bay part of the new town, while a "Buzzards Bay" naming would be unfair to Sagamore Beach.


Shark City

Assuming that we are unable to cut a concession for traffic from Cape Cod, and assuming that we lack the testicular fortitude to destroy the Canal bridges.... well, not all fights are physical.

If we can't take the physical means of going to Cape Cod away, why not attack them through tourism?

There would be no way of driving a car to Cape Cod without going past the NOW ENTERING SHARK CITY signs which we would dot the highway with. I'd even post the population on town signs, and cross it out every time someone died... you know, like they do in bad towns from cowboy movies.

Sure, most of those deaths would be Old Age, Cancer and so forth....  but you won't be thinking that when you drive past the Shark City sign.

Double Bay

One thing that this fictional town would have on every other town in the state would be the fact that we would be the only town to touch two (Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay) bays.

If you count Buttermilk Bay, we could even be Triple Bay.

This one is here mostly because it would make a great Casino name. If we stole enough of Wareham's eastern and Plymouth's southern forests, we could build a mega-casino right off the highway.

Shoot, I'd leave the bridges up at that point. Who wants to go to Taunton or friggin' Everett when you can instead gamble all night in Double Bay, and then dip over to Cape Cod for some daylight beach time?

Bowtie

"Bowtie" would be a play on the shape of the new town. Yes, it sucks.

Keeping the theme, but changing the shape.... this (and the Casino) would be a big motivator for the Wareham and Pymouth land grabs. If we seize the Ponds sections of Wareham and Plymouth, we'd be shaped like a mini-Connecticut.

Squanto

"Squanto" beats out "Samoset," "Metacomet," and "Massasoit" for Algonquin tribute purposes.

Squanto has the best Q Rating, and would be the best tourist-drawing name.

I don't know how we could do it, but maybe Johnny Depp or the Farrelly Brothers could be convinced to re-invent Squanto as an action hero. Maybe he goes all Seagal on invading Mi'kmaq, or perhaps he even kills a Sasquatch that was menacing Priscilla Alden. Squanto's story is an amazing one, but it needs more kung-fu and dinosaurs if he's getting his own town

Have Any Better Ideas? Let us know in the Comments...

Holiday Weekend Weather, And Early-Season Tropical Storm Information

We wish you the best on this Memorial Day weekend. Many plans, both solemn and joyous, will be influenced by the weather. We'll try to get you prepped for this.

Today should be nice. Aside for an isolated-but-powerful thunderstorm pushing ESE off of Nantucket at 8 AM, sunny skies should rule the early part of the day. Cloudiness will increase in the afternoon, and we'll have the chance for some sweet late-night thunderstorms.

High temperatures will push 80 on Cape Cod (a SW wind will help cool us off), and aim for the 90s inland. Here are some record high temperatures for the day that I stumbled across:

Boston -- 92 set in 1931
Providence -- 91 set in 1931
Hartford -- 93 set in 1977
Worcester -- 88 set in both 1911 and 1929
Milton/Blue Hill -- 90 set in 1929

HHH, friends... Hazy, Hot and Humid.

Sunday looks to be a mix of clouds and sun, and it will be a bit cooler (60s-70s). Some rain may arrive on Sunday night, which is where we get to that spaghetti chart with the tropical storm in it from at the top of the page up yonder.

Don't worry about a tropical storm hitting us Monday. Our water isn't warm enough to support it, even if it raced up at us. Although the season has begun, New England's tropical storm threat runs more August-October. Tropical storms are heat engines, and the waters south of us (water temperatures are in the 50s) presently have no fuel for her.

However a tropical storm does look like she will sample a bit of South Carolina cooking. Presently known as Tropical Depression Two, she is forecast to become Tropical Storm Bonnie by tonight.

Bonnie should be no big deal, sort of a nor'easter with an attitude. After striking the Carolinas, she looks to take a run up the coastline at New England, guided by an area of high pressure offshore and with an eastern-moving frontal boundary throwing her precipitation at us. That's where we get our taste of Bonnie.

She'll be a soaking rainstorm if we get a direct or even indirect hit out of her. The worst for SE Massachusetts looks to be in the late afternoon, but the threat of rain will be on us all day. If you have some shindig planned for Monday, you should have a strong indoor backup contingency plan.

She doesn't look to do much for the surf, as she won't be that strong when she's near us. There could be some rough surf on the South Coast and the Cape once she's been churning South of us for long enough. Don't board up the house or anything.

June tropical systems are rare in New England, and May ones are pretty much unheard of. This is a pretty concise list of New England hurricanes, and you don't see much/any early season activity vis a vis the Tropics. Even July is pretty weak historically up here.

Tropical Storm Agnes, which was a hurricane south of us, came ashore near New York City in June of 1972, but the effects on New England were minimal. Remnants of tropical storms like Alison (2001), Arlene (2005), Alberto (2006) and Barry (2007) also tapped New England in June. Barry dropped 3 inches of rain on Taunton. The dominant feature with these storms for New England, and especially eastern New England, were rain. Expect more of the same with Bonnie.

Ominous Storm Notes.... I used to roll with a girl named Bonnie when I was a younger man, and with God as my witness, and she once rendered me unconscious.

Archives: 2007 Nor'easter Hits Duxbury Beach

We're transferring our photo archive from one spot to another, and we're unearthing a few pictures that we'l be sharing out over the upcoming weeks.

One theme you will see a few times is "Duxbury Beach, Nor'easter."

We have a pile of pics on this topic, so brace yourselves over the next few weeks.

Hurricane season is actually the calm time on Duxbury Beach, so these storm photos will hopefully keep the storm-lovers happy during the off-season.

My memory is notoriously spotty, but I'm pretty sure that these pictures are from a 2007 nor'easter.

My sister Sheila is on the camera, and these pictures are from Ocean Road North on Duxbury Beach

These pictures ran on Cape Cod TODAY, who used to go off-Cape now and then if a writer maybe had a sister trapped in a beach house during a coastal storm.

It is technically Cape Cod Bay, I suppose. It also is part of why the Irish Riviera is included in this article.

If you'd like a scale of reference, take note of the fence in the lower left hand corner.

Keeping a lawn is a tough business on Duxbury Beach. Every winter, the storms take big chunks of it away, and what's left has been power-soaked in Atlantic salt water.

When I lived there, I had a lawn, a garden and a high-maintenance cobblestone patio to the right of that fence. Re-did it every year. I'm one of the very few people walking around in 2016 with a permanently deformed finger relating to a "cobblestone accident."

We're looking north in this picture, down northern Duxbury Beach towards Green Harbor.

It's almost impossible to see the town line, but it's about where the really large (100-150 yards) break in the seawall is if you're ever taking a walk down there. The break exists because the residents there decided that they were highly-enough elevated, and passed on paying the fee being charged to put up the concrete seawall in the 1950s.

Green Harbor gets a bit more of a curve to their seawall. This results in some spectacular surf-to-seawall crash spraying, as the wave hits the wall and rolls down it. You get some sweet house-high spray.

Duxbury has more of a straight-line frontage to storm winds, and they get the more foundation-shaking direct hits.

It looks worse than it is. The seawall takes most of the shots, and the spray- however impressive it may look- isn't as bad as it gets when the actual waves start coming over the wall. It's why the pay so much to repair the seawalls.

A photographer shooting pictures from this vantage point in the Blizzard of '78 or the Halloween Gale of 1991 would have been killed.

This storm did some damage, though. It tore down decks, flooded the street, smashed through fences, ruined yards and scared witless everyone who had moved into the neighborhood since the last really bad storm.

A lot of people in that neighborhood buy a cottage, renovate it, and then realize a bit too late that the area is Poseidon's punching bag. There's a lot of turnover for a neighborhood that is Heaven-on-Earth for the other 364 days of the year.

Again, this is like a C+ storm. It did damage, but it wasn't ripping houses down.

Beach people have a high bar vis a vis How Scared They Get During Ocean Storms. While this is a bit heavy for it, kids in the neighborhood do risk-taking games with slightly smaller storms.

What they call a "Death Run" involves dropping onto the beach between waves ad running as far down the beach as you can before you have to desperately claw your way back up and over the seawall.

"Death Runs" may have died out with my generation. I go to a lot of beaches during storms, and I never see anyone doing them.

... on purpose, anyhow.

The area behind the house we were shooting from is a meadow. Locals call it "Bradford's," after a family that ran a beach parking lot there. It's the Low Ground of the neighborhood.

You can see the remnants of the last of WWII-era cottages below. That house in the background is no longer standing. Someone was going to build condos there before this storm. I believe that the effort has since been abandoned.

Bradford's, like the rest of the neighborhood, sits between Cape Cod Bay and a rather large marsh. The marsh fills up during really high tides, and it spills over into the neighborhood.

The whole Gurnet Road area of Duxbury Beach becomes an island during storms, and the nearest dry land is over about where Duxbury High School is used to be. At the moment this photo was taken, Duxbury Beach was an island, about a half mile offshore.

It's basically why Duxbury Beach won this contest.

Duxbury Beach, MA