THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507270227
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 38 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Hurricanes and tropical storms take their toll on the Outer Banks,
but the extratropical cyclones - northeasters - of fall, winter and
spring are more numerous and, in the aggregate, more destructive.
Although northeasters are usually identified by month and year,
three have earned names. The Halloween Storm of 1991 was the
aftermath of Hurricane Grace, which passed far out to sea, not a
true northeaster. The Storm of the Century was legitimate and made
its share of mischief in March 1993, but it hardly deserved the
title bestowed by some excitable copy editor. A worse northeaster,
perhaps the worst in living memory, struck 21 years before. Having
beleagured the coast with gales and the interior with heavy snow
through the first week of March 1962, this system threw its knockout
punch early on the morning of the 7th. The storm surge, amplified by
the predicted spring tides and accompanied by winds gusting
unexpectedly to hurricane speed, made a respectable attempt to erase
decades of development from the barrier chains of the Eastern
Seaboard. On the Outer Banks, the combination of wind and water
transformed buildings into boats and vice versa, reopened forgotten
inlets and buried roads under feet of sand and rubble. Pushing
northward, the storm wiped out the chicken farms of Chincoteague,
Va., ripped away part of the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J., and
ravaged Fire Island, N.Y. As the waters receded, Outer Banks
publicist Aycock Brown snapped this unidentified man negotiating the
cluttered remains of what is now N.C. 12 in Kitty Hawk (Bill
Anderson's store is laid open on the right). Brown, an Episcopal lay
reader, recalled that March 7 was the first day of Lent and gave
this superlative northeaster the name that stuck: the Ash Wednesday
Storm.
by CNB