Pre-Ivan/Post-Ivan/Post-Dennis Pensacola Beach damage images

[HurryKane]

I'll try and find a larger version:

http://tinyurl.com/cll42

Success! Much bigger (and more) images:

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/d ... osets.html

Just click on the pics on the above linked page to get very large versions.

[iceangel]

http://photos.pensacolanewsjournal.com/ Hurricane Dennis pics..click on the pic for a larger view.

[Stormtrack]

It's amazing to me that people will build homes so close to the beach knowing that a hurricane may one day destroy it.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

It's amazing to me that people will build homes so close to the beach knowing that a hurricane may one day destroy it.

I agree...Its not the smartest thing to do.

[alicia-w]

we drove down old hwy 98 (Destin) yesterday evening and i was stunned by the amount of damage done by Hurricane Dennis. The sand is washed away all the way up to the homes now and in many cases, the parking lots in FRONT of condos have been severely compromised. Most of the walkways from homes to the beach is gone. But what I noticed the most is that the waves were almost perfectly straight and really long, parallel to the beach. i dont think i've ever seen that there before. did ivan, cindy, dennis, whatever, change the topography of the beach so much that whatever storms we get will continue to erode the beaches?

After what I saw yesterday, I think folks should NOT be allowed to build on the Gulf side of 98. One more decent storm and it will all be gone anyway. There wont be anything left to hold them up!

Will go out in the next couple of days to try to take pics and will post them in a Webshots album.

[PTrackerLA]

we drove down old hwy 98 (Destin) yesterday evening and i was stunned by the amount of damage done by Hurricane Dennis. The sand is washed away all the way up to the homes now and in many cases, the parking lots in FRONT of condos have been severely compromised. Most of the walkways from homes to the beach is gone. But what I noticed the most is that the waves were almost perfectly straight and really long, parallel to the beach. i dont think i've ever seen that there before. did ivan, cindy, dennis, whatever, change the topography of the beach so much that whatever storms we get will continue to erode the beaches?

After what I saw yesterday, I think folks should NOT be allowed to build on the Gulf side of 98. One more decent storm and it will all be gone anyway. There wont be anything left to hold them up!

Will go out in the next couple of days to try to take pics and will post them in a Webshots album.

You were probably seeing the swells from Emily which is why the looked so even. The beach along hwy 98 has been very narrow for years and I can only imagine what it looks like now.

[alicia-w]

Yep, i knew it was the Emily induced waves, but the beach was HUGE!! I mean, I've never seen it so wide! Never! And the waves were perfectly straight. I dont know how to explain it. It was bizarre.

The locals living on the beach will freak now that the high tide line is at their back doors.

will take pictures to explain better.....

[themusk]

It's amazing to me that people will build homes so close to the beach knowing that a hurricane may one day destroy it.

The catch there is the word "know".

The minds of humans play a lot of tricks on them:

"It can't happen to me"
"I'm more likely to win the lottery than to be hit by a hurricane"
"I've been through a(n outer rainband of a fading category 1) hurricane, and they're not so bad"
"If it really was so bad, they'd never allow me to build here in the first place"
"If Geraldo Rivera can stand outside in a storm, my house can stand up to a storm"
"If anything really does happen, no problem, the insurance company/government/Red Cross/fill-in-the-blank will take care of everything"
"Well, yes, (insert evil storm name here) was devastating to me, but my luck has got to change. What are the odds it's going to happen again?"

So do real estate developers, contractors, and politicians promoting development.

Finally, we here are here because we take an interest in the weather, and because we take an interest in the subject, we understand the risks associated with storms. Most persons don't take an interest in the weather, and can be very naive about hazards.

When I was last visiting my family in the midwest, there was a tornado warning late one evening, with a funnel cloud sighted about a mile or so away. I know (as I suspect most of us do) that the time from warning to strike can be just a minute or two, and so immediately headed to the basement. My relatives ran about gathering up things, turning on/off lights, making phone calls, and otherwise killing off about fifteen precious minutes of time as I shouted to them from the basement that they needed to just drop everything and take shelter.

(Yes, these people are native midwesterners, as I am, and went through an F4 tornado huddled in a cellar with me in my youth).

I explained later that if a funnel cloud is coming for them they have on average only a few minutes of warning. They looked at me like I was some kind of paranoid kook (never mind my EM/ hazards research background). I'll bet they still wander around the house killing off time during warnings, and I hope that Mother Nature never decides to call them on it.