Flying Point Beach signpost, September 2012. Photo: Melissa Cooper
The YouTube video below was filmed yesterday, presumably in the early hours of Hurricane Sandy. It shows Flying Point Road in Water Mill, Long Island, from a vantage point very close to my family house, where my brother has weathered the storm.
Our house sits just before the curve in the road where the filmmaker’s car sits. On the near side of the curve, the bay laps the shore and there is a small stretch of land between the bay and the road to absorb its overflow. On the far side of the curve,, the bay is contained by a small retaining wall. The road is wider here, but there is no shore.
Mecox Bay, Water Mill, NY in calmer days. Photo: Melissa Cooper
This is where people park their cars on the side of the road to fish for crabs.
Crabbing in Mecox Bay in September 2012. Photo: Melissa Cooper
When we first started coming to our house in the mid-1960s (Well, it was Mr. Jennings’s house then), there was only one other house visible on the road between us and Flying Point Beach, maybe two. Today, there are many, even on the bay side. But the old farmers knew what they were doing in not building closer to the water. Yesterday, beyond this curve, the road was completely submerged as Hurricane Sandy pushed vast amounts of water from the ocean into the little skillet of Mecox Bay.
Here is a terrific photo taken a little further down the road between our house and the ocean, at approximately 11 am Monday. The roadside and retaining wall break off briefly for this little stretch of shoreline.
Photo: Austin Handler; SouthamptonPatch.com
I believe that stretch of land and water usually looks like this. Note the fence on the right in both photos.
Crabbing on Flying Point Road in early summer 2012. Photo: Melissa Cooper
The road stretches half a mile from the curve to Flying Point Beach. Just before the road rises to the beach parking lot, it makes a sharp left and runs another half mile straight out to the beach we call “the far beach.” This morning, the road to the beach remained under water. My brother hitched a ride to the far beach on a huge flat-bed truck that was going to check on damage; his own car would never have made it. On nearby Luther Drive, about 100 feet in from the road, he spotted a 12-foot plastic jet ski dock that belonged, my brother was informed, to people living on the far side of Mecox Bay.
At the far beach, the ocean had pushed vast amounts of water into the bay, and flooded all the way up to the road. The beach is now completely flat, no slope at all. My brother described lines of breaking wines reaching to the horizon. The ones breaking on shore were six or seven feet high, but the ones farthest out near the horizon rose up over the water like a house, maybe twelve or thirteen feet high. We’ve been watching the ocean in storms all our lives, but my brother says he has ever seen anything remotely like this.
I’m writing from NYC, so I don’t have any photos of my own to show the wild transformations wrought by Sandy. Instead, I’ll show you another photo of beautiful little Mecox Bay, as it often appears.
Heron at sunset in Mecox Bay, March 2012. Photo: Melissa Cooper
I hope the herons, egrets, swans, ducks and all the other birds and animals have weathered the storm safely,
Out walking the dog 