Surf Check: Round 1

CCM sent out their A Team to chin-check the coastline during the waning Supermoon high tide, and we went from Scituate to Sagamore. This is an iconic photo angle from Marsh Vegas.

Unfortunately for the readers, it wasn't that bad. Here is fearsome Scituate, about 45 minutes before high tide. Joaquin is still a day away from threatening the Bahamas, let alone Massachusetts.

The surf does look mean if you, say, stand on some steps, squat down, and shoot the wave as it rolls safely under you.

OK, that's what it really looks like.... Duxbury Beach, high tide.

Staring down at Green Harbor from Duxbury, you can see where this will become an issue once the seas have built themselves up over a few storm tides.

The prospect of having allergy fuel like Goldenrod blown into your face at 70 mph is something that most coastal residents of Scituate don't waste a lot of time worrying about.

Duxbury Bay is showing us that it can inundate a neighborhood on a flood tide, even without waves.

Duxbury Beach can look you in the eye and stab you in the back at the same time, as water washes in around Saquish and enters the neighborhood from the seawall-free marsh side.

Water flowing over Gurnet Road, during a storm where the biggest wave could be dodged by standing on the 3rd step up on a set of beach stairs.

We got out of Scituate before the marshes started spilling over. I want to do some storm time in Scin Scity, but I also had to get the kid off the bus at 3:30... and beaches with marshes behind them can sometimes hold you in place for a few hours.

We did high tide in Duxbuy, where I know the roads better and where we still almost got trapped. Gurnet Road and her side streets get washed over rather easily.

This is us driving down Gurnet Road, which washed over a foot deep in the ten minutes that we were in town. For locals, this is at the bottom of Cable Hill.

To be fair to Duxbury Beach Park, the scenery to the left of the sign is what they're selling. We shot to the right.

I only have so much flooded-marsh material. This is Duxbury Beach, aiming at Duxbury Proper.

Not storm related... but pretty cool, playboy.

Any insurance actuary worth her salt would say "Stephen will die in a 45 mph crash on a Scituate side street while shooting a blurry picture out of the car window," right up until she saw me open the Marl'bros.

They got the Duxbury Beach seawall up just a few months before Hurricane Carol hit. If you don't believe me, ask Tony. Our friend Tony, if he is alive, is 60+ years old if he did that as a child. He might be 60 years dead if he did that as the job foreman.

We got off easy today, but we're planning the same trip tomorrow, after the seas have built a bit. Go Coast Guard!

Swansea Hurricane Planner

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Swansea at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five of these hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Fall River Hurricane Planner

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Fall River at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five of these hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Current projections of Tropical Storm Joaquin's path: