Shore Towns Brace For Nor'easter's High Winds, Tidal Flooding

Four months after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast, Jersey Shore towns are still trying to recover.

But now another major storm is coming. Tomorrow's Nor'easter could really cause a mess.

Those of us who remember fondly our pre-school days of building sand castles on the beach knew all that work would be for nothing once a big wave came and washed it way.

Now, that's the concern of the adults who have been spending weeks dredging up sand from the ocean floor and pumping onto the beach in places like Ocean City, FOX 29's Steve Keeley reported Tuesday morning.

He showed there that a dredge far out to sea has a pipe all of the way back to land, where the sand helps to replenish dunes and beaches in the shore town.

Slush and snow are the worries for road crews in the Philadelphia suburbs, but high winds and heavy rain are the one-two punch about to hit the TKO'd Jersey Shore.

They have been spending millions of dollars and many days since Sandy dredging up sand to pump it up onto the beaches. But the fear is all this fresh sand will be stolen right back by tomorrow's storm.

Wicked wind gusts, expected to reach 50 to 60 mph along the coast, could set back scheduled repairs and replenishment to the beaches and dunes and businesses and boardwalk, especially in harder hit towns farther north.

The National Weather Service says that, after Sandy's, Wednesday's tidal flooding may be the worst of the season. The highest flood water may hit the streets and then continue higher than normal all day Wednesday and even into Thursday.

Places where dunes have not been built back up will get the worst flooding. So, there's more concern at the southern end of the island in Ocean City, where they have been complaining they are not getting beach replenishment or dunes restored and their houses are extremely vulnerable to the storms.