More North Carolina Homes Fall Into Ocean Amid Moderate Nor'easter

A rainbow appears above the wreckage of more houses
that collapsed into the surf in Buxton, North Carolina
this week. Photo via Facebook, Island Free Press.

 If you've been keeping track like I have, more homes fell into the ocean on North Carolina's Outer Banks Tuesday. 

One of the collapses was a large green home that has been teetering precariously since waves from hurricanes Humberto and Imelda battered it between September 30 and October 3. Nine homes fell into the surf on those dates. 

Another home was ready to fall because a neighboring one that collapsed on October 18 struck its pilings, making it vulnerable to new waves. 

During a moderate-sized nor'easter on Tuesday, four of the homes fell within less than two and a half hours of one another. The other collapsed late in the afternoon. Winds were gusting to 50 mph and tides were higher than normal. 

A total of 27 homes have collapses since 2020. Fifteen of those collapses have happened in the past month. One in Rodanthe, North Carolina and the others in Buxton. 

Brett Barley, a professional surfer from Buxton wrote on Facebook: 

"The Oceanfront of Buxton is becoming unrecognizable.....As I stood at the end of Cottage Ave. this evening with @danielpullen, neither one of us could wrap our heads around what we were looking at, or had just witnessed this afternoon.

Both of us have grown up our whole lives running every dune of this area, chasing waves & beach days, and Daniel actually spending years living on Cottage Ave, its hard to witness the end of these roads just laid bare, Not just the front line of houses, but now homes that were 2 back and 3 back from the ocean are gone or at water's edge. Not just rental houses at stake, but now main dwellings of locals, or houses of family friends.....it's heartbreaking to see, and a lot to take in & process." 

Hurricane Melissa was passing far offshore of North Carolina today. That storm will probably send more swells into North Carolina's Outer Banks. The swells, in turn will threaten more vulnerable homes. 

Locals are monitoring three homes that look like they will collapse at any moment. 

To review what's happening. Barrier islands always shift, and that's what's happening in the North Carolina Outer Banks. However, changes there are on turbocharge lately because climate change is making sea levels rise and intensifying stories, 

Video:

Clips of some of the homes in Buxton, North Carolina falling into the sea Tuesday. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that. 

Another House Into North Carolina Ocean, As More Storms Loom

An 11th house to fall into the ocean at the Outer Banks
of North Carolina sits in the water shortly after it fell
last weekend. The one that fell is on the right. The one on
the left was damaged by the wreckage and is in danger,
The green house in the background
is also ready to go

 In case you're keeping track, another North Carolina house fell into the Atlantic Ocean a week ago.

And there really wasn't much of a storm going on. Like many houses battered by recent storms, the sand dunes removed from underneath them, it was time to sadly collapse. 

It was the 11th one to go since mid-August, when powerful Hurricane Erin passed by far offshore. Under sunny, beach weather skies, Erin send battering waves into Cape Hatteras, starting the chain of collapses, 

They all went due to large swells from offshore hurricanes, or a fairly routine nor'easter. Theses were by no means any kind of record breaking, intense storms raking North Carolina's Outer Banks. 

It's just the ever shifting sands of barrier islands, which want to move westward, leaving the houses to the whims of the ocean. This is made all the more precarious by rising sea levels brought on by climate change. 

Which means this isn't going away,.

The house that collapses last Saturday was built in 1956.  It was once well inland from the beach, but the sands shifted and eroded, and the sea level came up, making its destruction inevitable.

The wreckage of the house that just fell smacked into another one, which I'm sure caused damage. There's other houses, battered, on rickety stilts cracked by the pounding of waves, which will inevitably make them fall.

Maybe within the next few days. 

Two nor'easters, one Tuesday, the other Thursday or Friday, will buffet the Carolina coast. Hurricane Melissa, now menacing the Caribbean, is expected to finally scoot northward far offshore the East Coast toward the end of the upcoming week. Melissa will probably swing more battering ocean waves into the Outer Banks, too.

Video:

Aerial views of the latest house to collapse into the waves, and views of other homes that are in imminent danger. As always when I put videos in this here blog thingy, click on this link to view. or if you see the image below, click on that.

North Carolina Coastal Town Braces For Nor'easter Season: How Many More Homes Will Fall Into The Ocean?

House on the left in process of collapsing into the
ocean on September 24 in Rodanthe, North Carolina
It bumped into the house on the right, damaging it
and that house is doomed to collapse, too.

Seemingly centuries ago, really just weeks ago,  back in mid-September before we had to deal with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the coastal town of Rodanthe, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, had been facing the kind of damage you sometimes see in hurricanes.   

Just a slower motion version of it. Without the actual hurricane. 

Neither hurricanes Helene and Milton really affected Rodanthe. But before those two storms, all it took was a routine easterly fetch of wind and waves off the Atlantic Ocean to cause more problems there. 

Houses are falling into the water, as you can see in the video in this link, for instance.  Also, theres's a couple good news videos of this situation that adds more good context to this post.

According to a September 24 Washington Post piece:

"The latest came early Tuesday afternoon when the ocean claimed an unoccupied house at 23039 G.A. Kohler Ct. It marked the third such home collapse since Friday on this erosion-plagued stretch of the Outer Bans - and the 10th home to fall since 2020.

Rodanthe, home to some the most rapid rates of erosion on the East Coast, has become a poster child in recent years for the perils of living along a vulnerable coastline, particularly in an age of more intense storms and rising seas. 

Multiple homeowners in this small community have raced to relocate their homes farther from the shoreline, often at a cost of thousands of dollars. Others have tried to move their homes further from th encroaching tides, only to run out of time."

Three homes fell into the ocean in less than a week. Days before the house described above fell in, yet another one did. That failure caused added damage to a precariously situated house next door to fall into the waves. 

The one the Washington Post described in that September 24 article appears to have damaged the one next to it, so that one should go soon if it hasn't already. A nearby red colored house also looks doomed. 

Earlier this month, the Board of Commissioners in Dare County, where Rodanthe is located, voted to apply for a FEMA Flood Mitigation Assistance grant. A state project director is reaching out to eligible homeowners to see if they're interested in the voluntary program.

The program targets 20 potential properties in Rodanthe that are in or close to the ocean and within 300 feet of stable vegetation. The whole process takes three or four years, so we're probably going to see more homes fall into the ocean.  

Aerial view in Rondanthe, North Carolina taken a couple
months ago. Four houses in the foreground
have since collapsed into the ocean, 

Which of course is a problem since each collapse causes a huge mess. Debris spreads miles up and down the beach with each collapse, and it all has to be picked up. I'm sure sharp objects like glass shards and nails are left behind, too. 

Inches matter with sea level rise. According to a Washington Post article from March, sea levels have risen seven inches in recent decades at Oregon Inlet, near Rodanthe. A stretch along Seagull Street in Rodanthe loses about a dozen feet or more per year to erosion. 

I'm also sure there was more erosion on the Outer Banks and elsewhere along the Atlantic Seaboard last week.  We just had a full super moon - named because the moon is a little closer to Earth than usual and looks bigger than it normally does,

This super moon contributed to King Tides that caused "sunny weather flooding" along coastlines from New England to  Florida. This never used to be a real problem decades ago, but sea level rise has made even just a full moon in calm weather cause coastal flooding. 

A nor'easter far off shore probably also contributed to swells that probably added to the erosion late this past week. Video of Buxton, North Carolina, a little south of Rodanthe, showed King Tide waves smashing ashore, causing plenty of flooding and erosion under crystal clear blue skies. 

Speaking of nor'easters, even though hurricane season is about to wane, nor'easter season is just ramping up.  This will no doubt increase the pressure on homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks, and up and down the East Coast for that matter. 

It'll be interesting to see how many more houses and buildings fall into the ocean this winter, especially if it's really stormy out there. 

VIDEOS

CBS News video, first aired Wednesday, on the challenges that face North Carolina's Outer Banks, focusing on Rodanthe. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that: 

Television station WRAL has more on this. Again, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.