Sand Dune Sheered Away By Winds and Surf at Cliffwood Beach

I went on my routine walk today along the bayshore at Cliffwood Beach and suddenly realized the full extent of the damage to the dunes.

I usually walk on a dirt road that goes from a metal gate along Greenwood Avenue to the dunes near the waterfront. My late dog Eliot would always be anxious to climb over the sandy hill to see who might be on the beach beyond. We were always careful to walk along a designated path across the dune to avoid the dune grass and the snow fence mounted along the crest of the dune to keep it from blowing away.

On my walk today, I could see the Raritan Bay from the path through the woods, a view that used to be obstructed by a large sand dune not two weeks ago.

Looking toward the seawall you can see that the dune is pretty much gone.

Someone has made a vain attempt to restore the dune by placing a small mound of sand in the vast emptiness, but many, many truckloads of sand are gone. Much more needs to be done.

You get a sense of the loss of sand by looking at the cutaways across the bottom third of this view. You are looking west towards the park and Lakeshore Drive. Notice the telephone poles that follow the turn in Lakeshore Drive in the distance. This view would have been of a long dune running parallel to the poles going west. All that material has blown away.

This bunch of small trees held part of the dune. Notice the cutaway, which looks to be nearly two feet tall.

Here's another view.

This is a view from the western edge of the seawall looking towards the Bayview Presbyterian Church on nearby West Concourse. Again you can see the cutaway sand from what used to be a walker's passageway across the dune. That was actually the low point in the dune. It looks to be absent two feet of sand sheered away by the winds and surf.

All that is left is a rocky shore.