By Mike Busch 10-10-19
The Ocean Storm that is still spinning offshore created some big surf and high tides all over the South Shore today. Thanks to a heads up from fellow photographer Trish Minogue Collins, I checked out an area on Fire Island between Smith Point and Old Inlet before sunset that occasionally allows Ocean water to run directly across Fire Island and drain into the bay. This area is considered the Otis Pike High Dunes Wilderness Area and part of the Fire Island National Seashore. Unfortunately, there aren’t any high dunes left after Hurricane Sandy flattened the area.
While it looks a little scary, this has happened several times before that I know of, most recently in 2017 as Hurricane Jose passed our area. That overwash actually made what we called the Jose Peninsula, with sand fanning out into the bay, you can check out some video of that here.
As soon as I got down to the beach it started raining heavy enough for me to leave my real camera equipment behind so I apologize for the lousy GoPro and Iphone pics but it still a very cool thing to see in person. As we made our way west, the beach was mostly inundated with waves occasionally pushing into the dunes. As you can see in the video both my dog and I got soaked.
IPhone Video and More Images on Page 2