For those in the area… I am seeing some truly alarming photos - a parking lot for a school flooded up higher than the lower rim of car windows - and hearing stories of rescues from houses where water and ice is pouring into homes that are not what you would call beach cottages. Is weather.com getting overexcited or is the flooding from this Nor’easter at a level that will leave significant longer term damage?
King tides with a nor’easter
It’s true.
Same in Portland. TV newscaster on Commercial St has a wharf rat run under her feet
Second highest tide in history
Looks bad
Sixty or seventy mph wind onshore, high tide and precipitation would do it. They predicted a bad one when the two pressure systems from the arctic and the caribbean got together.
Amazing sights. Some of the roads look like they had slush waves like sing posted in the other thread. Looked at Google Maps of those areas with traffic enabled a few minutes ago. Lines and lines of red dots for road closures.
And way down heah , people were advised to stay off the roads near Myrtle Beach because of the ice.
The times they are a changing. When I have flown cross country and looked down I rarely see any place that doesn’t show the impact of man on the landscape below. Why some would find it hard to believe that humans don’t have an impact on weather is beyond me given the scientific evidence.
Here in the east all we are hearing is bomb cyclone and record cold, but 2 days ago parts of Alaska were warmer than Jacksonville, FL. It is the warm water and weather system in the Pacific driving the cold down into the east and meeting the warm Gulf Stream that’s driving this system.
What a year of severe weather we have had. I feel for those coastal area folks suffering from this event.
@kayakmedic Do they know anything about the status of year rounders on the islands yet? Probably not unless they reported in by radio, but that is not going to get covered by the guys with mikes and cameras in blue down jackeNot
Last evening the local SC news was advising that I-95 from about I-26 to the GA line would be ice and suggested to avoid it.
So we had some serious flooding all along the coastline, including downtown Boston and the (new) Seaport district, comparable to the Blizzard of ‘78. Yes. it may seem a confluence of astronomical high tide timed with a 3’ storm surge from the a blizzard. But, I think we are going to see more and more of this in the future given projected rising sea levels.
Hey, we don’t need to worry as we keep out heads stuck in the beach sand that is washing away… LOL. It’s just too bad my current home-break has to get washed away in my lifetime.
sing
(Living on a hill that will be a future beach front. 
)
@Celia said:
@kayakmedic Do they know anything about the status of year rounders on the islands yet? Probably not unless they reported in by radio, but that is not going to get covered by the guys with mikes and cameras in blue down jackeNot
I don’t know but usually islanders don’t have houses perched over seawalls… Every bit of concrete is expensive when barged out. Portland ME is a city partly of islands and the ferry kept running… Even though the ferry ramp had to be adjusted UP as the tide was the second highest on record.
You’ll notice the blue jacket people don’t come to Maine much… We get to watch them scratch in two inches of snow elsewhere.
There will continue to be destruction as long as people insist on being right on the ocean… Like Camp Ellis… right on the ocean. Residents know what they signed up for so I don’t really pity them at all.
And we lost a clammer. Why he was out in a small boat in the storm is beyond me.
@kayakmedic
Hadn’t thought about adjusting the ferry ramp higher. Hard to tell exactly what was happening in Rockland from photos but not seeing reports of long term damage. Where I was looking has different timing than Portland, may have been a useful gap.
I checked local media out of Maine and saw the story on the clammer. Best I can guess is the water came in faster and higher than he expected. Sad.
The damaged areas are the usual. Camp Ellis is a fav.
Rockland is fine. I was at Five Islands Mon. I think that is fine too
Maine is still here
Update . Damage reports coming in. mostly flooding. The historic brining shack in Lubec washed off its pilings. Its now out to sea a bit and again stuck… Unknown if it can be salvaged ( or more to the point the historic stuff in it).
Cooks Lobster Shack in Harpswell went under due to flooding. Its still there but damaged ( electric and salt water don’t mix). Kennebunkport had flooding in several restaurants and businesses.
Not sure about my favorite restaurant in Bass Harbor
@kayakmedic Thanks. From the phone call I made yesterday, appears that the diff in high tide between Portland and Rockland may have been fortuitous. Plus the south facing smaller coves and bays can catch a break sometimes in these storms. Many years later you can still see the smarts of those old whaling captains in where they based their operations.
Just saw a video shared by someone of the area between rt 1 and the river over the bridge and SE of Schooner Landing in Damariscotta. Shot Jan 4, I assume at or near high tide. Looks like the businesses in most of the stretch lower than rt 1 itself got enough water to nail at least their utilities. I had my car parked there this last August to meet a friend to eat in King Eider.
We’re just south of Boston right on the coast. I’ve been eyeing the high tides all week before the storm.
I might be mistaken, but I think this was the highest tide on record in the Boston area.
There’s the usual suspects perched close to the water that always get hit, but then there was a lot of flooding in areas that you wouldn’t expect. Trouble is the crazy temperature drop afterwards that froze a lot of the water wherever it ended up.
Our local auto body shop down the road, had 27 customer cars totaled, because their parking lot flooded. In Gloucester, the off street parking lot, where they wanted folks to park to get cars off the street flooded.
Many places are built to weather storms from the north nor’east quite well. It’s when you get these high tides and the wind, which was really brutal with this storm, that switch around to the northwest, and seems to get behind these well established “safe” coastal areas, causes a new range of flooding and damage.
I must give credit to the utility companies though, even with all the crazy storms we seldom, if ever (knocks on wood) loose power.
And I think it will be the insurance companies that have to pay out on these storms, will be leveraging the government to take climate change more seriously, because it’s going to be affecting their bottom line.
Ouch - for the auto shop and the folks who did the “right thing” and responsibly moved their cars. Sorry to hear of the damages. And if it freezes after - one day many years ago about a third of our local police car fleet had to be replaced. They had parked in a location that had been safe for the last 100 years. That year it wasn’t, and they stayed visible in the ice from the sidewalk adjacent but one level higher for another week. We had just elected a new mayor and it was officially his second day on the job.
Eventually that cost will have to go somewhere, and the finger pointing is going to ramp up again soon. FEMA is already talking bringing up homeowner flood insurance again, may be nearly 5 grand a year from high 3’s now for a typical home in Zone A.
@sing said:
So we had some serious flooding all along the coastline, including downtown Boston and the (new) Seaport district, comparable to the Blizzard of ‘78. Yes. it may seem a confluence of astronomical high tide timed with a 3’ storm surge from the a blizzard. But, I think we are going to see more and more of this in the future given projected rising sea levels.Hey, we don’t need to worry as we keep out heads stuck in the beach sand that is washing away… LOL. It’s just too bad my current home-break has to get washed away in my lifetime.
sing
(Living on a hill that will be a future beach front.
Your post made me revisit what I believe is one of the finest songs written in the past decade, give or take. From one of America’s finest songwriters:
Joe Henry - Our Song - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cflReZ1nZDA
Lyrics
I saw Willie Mays
At a Scotsdale Home Depot
Looking at Garage Door Springs
At the the far end of the 14th row
His wife stood there beside him
She was quiet and they both were proud
I gave them room but was close enough
That I heard him when he said out loud
This was my country
And this was my song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it’s ending wrong
This was my country
This frightful and this angry land
But it’s my right if the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
The sun is unforgiving
And there’s nobody who would choose this town
But we’ve squandered so much of our goodwill
That there’s nowhere else will have us now
We’re pushing line at the picture show
For cool air and a chance to see
A vision of ourselves portrayed
As younger and braver and humble and free
This was our country
This was our song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it’s ending wrong
This was our country
This frightful and this angry land
But it’s my right if the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
I’ve started something I can’t finish
And I barely leave the house, it’s true
I keep a wrap on my sores and joints
But yes, I’ve had my blessings too
I’ve got my mother’s pretty feet
And the factory keeps my house in shape
My children, they’ve both been paroled
And we get by on the piece we’ve made
I feel safe, so far from heaven
From towers and their ocean views
From here I see a future coming across
What soon will be beaches too
But that was him, I’m almost sure
The greatest centerfielder of all time
Stooped by the burden of endless dreams
His and yours and mine
He hooked each spring beneath his foot
He leaned over then he stood upright
Testing each against his weight
For one that had some play and some fight
He’s just like us, I wanna tell him
And our needs are small enough
Something to slow a heavy door
Something to help us raise one up
And this was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it’s ending wrong
Well, this was God’s country
This frightful and this angry land
But if it’s his will, the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
If it’s his will, the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
Songwriter: Joseph Lee Henry
Our Song lyrics © BMG Rights Management US, LLC
Artist: Joe Henry
Album: Civilians
Released: 2007
Update on the historic shack from Lubec. It floated into Canadian waters before it got stuck out there. Apparently there are complications about getting it back because it entered another count®y.
http://wnyt.com/news/storm-blew-historic-building-to-canada-maine-wants-it-back/4740575/?cat=657