Today's Floods Down the Shore

The plan today was to check out a house in Ocean City for a home and garden story; grab food for my book launch party; and then head to West Wildwood to do an interview. None of that happened.

The first heads up that something might be wrong down the shore was passing 6ABC's Cathy Gandolfo on the Atlantic City Expressway (I was tempted to ride next to her with a copy of my book in the window, but that would have been silly).

By the time I got onto the Garden State Parkway, the wind was really starting to push my car around. I considered taking the 34th street bridge into Ocean City because of the wind, but I'm glad I went over Route 52. I was just coming over the bridge when I saw that Ocean City was starting to flood. Badly.



The picture above is at 11th Street and Palen Avenue, right where CBS 3 was set up to do their noon news spot. Here's a few other pictures in Ocean City from the morning:







You can't quite see it in the last picture, but that field was full of seagulls riding out the storm. This was probably the last picture I could take without trying to rush...after that, the wind kept jerking me around and I snapped what I could.

I did manage to check out the house I was supposed to see for the story, but more to make sure it wasn't underwater (it was okay in the morning but I can't make guarantees for the afternoon).

I'd gotten a call from the person I was supposed to interview in West Wildwood about it being underwater. West Wildwood is known to flood, but this gentleman said his car was flooded -- and he had already parked it on higher ground, and it wasn't even high tide. So I got back on the Garden State Parkway and headed on down (I didn't want to risk sections of Ocean Drive being flooded or else I would have canvassed the shore towns in between). By that time, Route 47 into Wildwood was closed, so I headed in on Route 147 into North Wildwood.

It was worse there. Power was out in parts of North Wildwood. I tried to get close to West Wildwood so I could see what it looked like from across the bridge. The water was too deep for my car and ended up being too deep for me to walk.

This is a picture taken from my car on the way in. I heard that we had 60 mile per hour sustained winds. I could tell you how bad it was trying to walk around -- at times I had to turn my back to the wind -- but this picture really shows it:



Some more flooding:









It was at about this point that I realized I probably wasn't in the safest spot to be riding out the storm:



I also stepped on some ground and was up to my ankle in muck, so I got back in my car and headed up to Ocean City. At the time I left, it was looking like Route 147 was going to be closed down.

Ocean City didn't look took bad coming back in over the 34th Street Bridge, but some water was creeping up over the edges and I knew that it wasn't high tide yet. Still, I had high hopes that at least Shriver's would be open so I could get some salt water taffy for my party. They had been -- I just missed them. But Mac & Manco's was open. The crowd consisted of me and three pizza guys. I'm not a big pizza fan but nothing tasted better than that slice:



A few pictures from the Ocean City boardwalk:







I thought about taking a gamble and riding out high tide in Ocean City, but when the Mack & Manco guys said that the bridges were shutting down at 3:22pm, I hit the road. I was tired, soaked (I brought extra jackets and shoes but no extra jeans), and the adrenaline rush was starting to wane, which meant I was feeling extra sore from every time I braced myself against the wind. The entrance to the 9th Street Bridge was already blocked off (the streets that way were flooded, too, probably worse than what I'd seen in the morning). Here's a shot of what it looked like leaving over the 34th Street Bridge.



I'm home now. So what will I do next? Well, after a really hot shower and good night's sleep...I'll head back down tomorrow. Still need the stuff for my party, and there's nothing quite like walking the beach the day after a storm. I just hope that the roads will be open.

It's never safe to be in a flooded area, but this would have been a hundred times worse if it happened on a weekend in season. I didn't see a lot of people around, and that's probably a good thing. I never would have gotten home so quickly.

So that's my quick post of what happened today. Thanks to everyone who followed me on twitter...it's a great tool for things like this.