Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations

Hurricanes on sandy shorelines · By Dirk Frankenberg

Living in a salt marsh

house on a salt marsh

Figure 15. This house is built as far as possible from the shoreline. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)

Figure 15 shows an extreme example of siting a house as far as possible from the beachfront. This one appears to be built mostly on the salt marsh on the landward side of the island. It survived Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd without a scratch, but storm surges and strong winds can come from the west when hurricanes track up the coast offshore. Hurricane storm surges from the west were responsible for cutting both Oregon and Hatteras inlets through the Outer Banks. It is not inconceivable that future storms could damage houses as exposed as this one. This is an unusual site for houses on Figure Eight. In Figure 14, you can see that this house is much closer to the salt marsh than any other.

Definitions

salt marsh n.
A low coastal grassland frequently overflowed by the tide.
hurricane n.
A severe tropical cyclone originating in the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea or eastern regions of the Pacific Ocean, traveling north, northwest, or northeast from its point of origin, and usually involving heavy rains and has surface wind speeds greater than 74 miles (or 119 kilometers) per hour. [more]