Hurricane Ike is flooding my neighborhood
Hurricane Ike is causing some high tides and flooding over in my neighborhood on Pensacola Beach, the sound-side in particular. I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunrise:
But water rushing down the street is never a good sign:
Looks like the Gulf is coming over the dunes! Not a good thing for our expected turtle hatchlings on Pensacola Beach.
In fact, I found this screen covering used to keep crabs out of the turtle nests. I’ll be sure to let Barrier Island Girl and Traveling Turtle Girl know.
The Santa Rosa sound is rising:
And it is causing plenty of problems for my neighbors on the sound-side of the island:
I took many more pictures down at the pier this morning… I’ll have them up shortly!
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Great pictures! You really are getting good with your camera.
Dave,
HOORAH! You found the screen to the nest just east of you that I’ve been sitting. It was swept away around 3:30 – 4:00 a.m. this morning and we thought it was gone for good. If it’s still there would you grab it for us? It was VERY ROUGH night, but Kirsten rescued around 70 hatchlings from the nest and we got them safely into the Gulf of Mexico.
(Did I say “safely” — safely to the water, I guess, but it was like releasing them into a washing machine!)
DJ
DJ
We’re happy to know the screen found it back to land! I’m not sure that the rest of the nest will survive, but as DJ said, we were able to get 70 little loggerheads into the Gulf by dawn. 13 preferred land though and crawled right back to a Gulf Power street light, but we hunted them down and returned them to the Gulf as well.
The Santa Rosa and Fort Pickens areas of the National Seashore are flooded as well. I was almost trapped out at Santa Rosa around 3 am, but took a few non-recommended trips through some shallow surf to get back to a drier part of the island. It’s a mess out there!
Thanks so much for reclaiming our screen. If you’re interested in volunteering, you can contact me through my email and I can pass on info about nest sitting. DJ is doing a great job, even when I call her at 4am!