OCEAN CITY — A relatively rare anomaly has appeared at the Ocean City Inlet this week in the form of a wide, flat, sandy beach on the south side of the north jetty in a rocky area typically under water and pounded by heavy surf and swift currents.
Back-to-back-to-back Nor’easter’s brushed past the mid-Atlantic area in the last couple of weeks, creating high tides and pounding surf in and around the Inlet area. While Ocean City’s recently-replenished beaches generally held up well under the weeks-long onslaught, the sandy beach on the south side of the Inlet jetty has certainly raised some eyebrows.
The sandy spit of new beach, as wide as roughly 25 feet in some instances during certain tide changes, appeared this week on the south side of the north jetty, which, along with the south jetty on the opposite side provide bookends of sorts for the Inlet. The last time the phenomenon appeared in the Inlet was following Super Storm Sandy in 2012.
It’s likely the recent storms have reversed the typical pattern of sand movement along the coast near the Inlet. The littoral drift typically moves sand parallel to the shoreline in a north-south direction, piling sand up against the north jetty, which is why the beach is so wide at the Inlet.
Photo by Frank Cascio
Essentially, the jetty, as it is designed to do, acts as a damn and blocks sand from flowing naturally to the south and sand-starved Assateague Island. However, during the recent storms, that process likely worked in reverse with the prevailing currents moving from south to north. As a result, sand filled in on the south side of the north jetty creating the new, if temporary, beach actually in the Inlet.
Just as it did in 2012 after Sandy, the sand will eventually flow out again when normal current patterns return and the sandy beach in the Inlet will disappear through natural processes without any human intervention.
