The world according to me....

When Hurricane Ophelia passed close by eastern North Carolina in mid September, the storm kicked up big waves and produced a storm surge that reformed different areas of the coastline. It also made a mess of a section of Atlantic Beach that already suffered from poor quality material placed on it during a nourishment project in the winter of 2004/2005 (see here for more details). The hurricane, pushed up more mudballs (the dark blobs in the background of the above photo) onto the main section of the beach. These are in addition to the larger mudballs leftover from the end of the nourishment project; these big mudballs had been been colonized by grasses and weeds during the summer (see above photo), although the vegetation appears to have been killed by the excessive wind and salt spray from the hurricane. Also as a result of the heavy waves, much of the muddy layers of the beach front were exposed and kicked back up ontop of itself:

How long will it take for this section of beach to recover to "normal" conditions? I will try to keep this story updated as time goes by.