Rounding the nook close to the village of Rodanthe, there’s a stretch of freeway generally known as the S-Curves due to its twisting loops and turns. It’s, by nearly any measure, some of the weak sections of roadway in North Carolina, if not the nation. Years in the past, freeway officers erected an enormous dike right here with 2,200 sandbags — every bag was 15 toes lengthy, two toes tall, and 5 toes broad — after which buried the dike in much more sand in an effort to maintain the ocean at bay and the freeway, generally known as NC 12, open.
It didn’t work, or a minimum of it didn’t work as hoped. The Atlantic Ocean continued to pummel the towering synthetic dune, crashing excessive, tearing aside sandbags, and flooding the freeway — closing the one entry on and off of the decrease Outer Banks for days and typically weeks.
Following every storm, the North Carolina Division of Transportation (DOT) despatched in bulldozers and graders to rebuild the sand dike and patch the highway, solely to look at the following storm undo its work. “It’s just like the Siege of Troy,” stated native biologist Mike Bryant. “It simply goes on and on.”
Bryant managed the close by Pea Island Nationwide Wildlife Refuge — a sprawling, 13-mile-long sanctuary that pulls tundra swans, Canadian geese, and 400 different species of migrating birds for twenty years. He estimated that he spent 60 p.c of his time on NC 12, together with issuing permits to state and federal engineers to restore storm harm and severely eroding sand dunes. “It felt exhausting at occasions,” he stated.
U.S. coastal resorts from Cape Cod to Galveston face unprecedented challenges as shorelines slim and floodwaters inch nearer.
In a single sense, NC 12 stands as a metaphor for the risks of constructing something on a extremely dynamic, constantly-shifting barrier island, particularly one which has misplaced a whole bunch of toes of shoreline in locations over the past century and now faces even-larger threats from sea degree rise and extra frequent and highly effective storms associated to local weather change. The dangers aren’t restricted to the Outer Banks, after all. Nationally, U.S. coastal resorts from Cape Cod to Miami to Galveston face unprecedented and dear challenges as their shorelines slim and floodwaters inch ever-closer to hundreds of thousands of homes, condominiums, and accommodations — over one trillion-dollars-worth of property in all.
Nonetheless, nowhere are the threats extra seen than alongside the famed Outer Banks of North Carolina, the place every summer season a flotilla of SUVs ship keen vacationers, swelling the inhabitants practically tenfold, to over 300,000, whereas additionally fueling a vacationer economic system that helps 1000’s of jobs and generates hundreds of thousands in tax revenues for native governments.
Practically 4 many years in the past, the College of Virginia coastal geologist Robert Dolan, a long-time researcher of barrier islands, wrote that the Outer Banks are “one of many highest natural-hazard danger zones alongside the whole Jap Seaboard of the US.” He cited the Banks’ distinctive geography and dangerous publicity to storms, unstable currents, and percussive winds.
Considered from an airplane, the practically 200-mile-long ribbon of islands resembles a baby’s Etch-A-Sketch drawing, skewing north to south for miles, then out of the blue veering east to west close to Hatteras Village, earlier than turning as soon as extra in a southeasterly course. Among the islands are low and slim, only some toes above sea degree, and particularly weak to winter Nor’easters and hurricanes in summers. The nice and cozy waters of the Gulf Stream and colder Labrador Present collide simply miles offshore, creating harmful shoals and a few of the largest waves alongside the East Coast. Over many centuries, scores of inlets have opened and closed on the Outer Banks, whereas the barrier islands have slowly migrated landward as sand has washed throughout shorelines and flats on the oceanside and marshes have expanded alongside the bottom, in response to one federal research.
Regardless of these dangers, builders proceed so as to add billions of {dollars} of actual property, from Corolla within the north to Ocracoke Village within the south, making the Outer Banks the fastest-growing part of the North Carolina coast. Property values have additionally soared to at an all-time excessive. Dare County, which incorporates 1000’s of seashore properties, just lately valued all of its property at practically $18 billion. Whereas the worth of ocean property in smaller Currituck County has ballooned to nearly $5 billion.