Highest Tide on A Cold Winter’s Storm

They called the storm a “bomb cyclone”.  I don’t even think they gave the storm a name.  It was a winter hurricane!  And it came on a very high tide.

I prepared in the usual way:  stocking the fridge, wheeling out and starting-up the portable generator, and calling my father to make sure that he was prepared.  The forecast was for rain turning to snow with one of those big pink lines in between that reads as the dreaded “freezing rain”.  It had been freezing cold for over a week so I was worried that we were setting up for the perfect Ice Storm.  Power would be out for days, my elderly mother would be frozen, and life as I knew it would go into a winter holding pattern that involved a lot of fires in the fireplace and jigsaw puzzles solved by candlelight.

On storm day, it was grey and rainy…and warm.  The wind was strong and gusty, but nothing crazy.  Of course, I couldn’t sit still.  “Let’s go for a drive and check out the high tide” I suggested to anyone that would listen.  So off we went…

The first sign that something was different were the two deer that we encountered on the side of Route 6A.  Although deer sightings on Cape Cod are not unusual, it was the first time I’d ever seen them on the side of Route 6A.  They were visibly wet and seemed a bit out of sorts.

As we continued on our way to check things out, we could see that tide was high, in fact, it was starting to cross the road we were traveling on.  Nevertheless, we ventured on.  Here are some pictures:

It turns out that high tide that was schedule to hit at 12:48pm was to be a 12.1 foot high tide.  They call these tides King Tides.  Suffice it to say, we came to our senses after witnessing some significant destruction, some scared deer and more flooding than I’d ever seen before. We headed home just missing being stranded and/or flooded at the marina.

Here’s hoping that the next time the High (est) Tides hit, it isn’t accompanied by a “bomb cyclone”!

Also here’s a link to the Cape Cod Times Article with pictures showing Route 6A flooded.

January 2018