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A Cape Cod Notebook can be heard every Tuesday morning at 8:45am and afternoon at 5:45pm.It's commentary on the unique people, wildlife, and environment of our coastal region.A Cape Cod Notebook commentators include:Robert Finch, a nature writer living in Wellfleet who created, 'A Cape Cod Notebook.' It won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.

Remembering the "Perfect Storm" 25 Years Later

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This coming weekend marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of an extraordinary meteorological event that was known variously as “The Halloween Gale” or “The No-Name Storm” of 1991. But perhaps it’s best remembered as “The Perfect Storm” the term used by meteorologists to describe an unusual alignment of three major weather systems along the northeast coast – a “perfect” alignment, if you will, that produced a northeast storm of almost unprecedented length and intensity.

For four days – from Monday, October 28 to Thursday, October 31 – uninterrupted gale-force winds blew out of the northeast, reaching sustained winds on the Cape of 55 mph with gusts of over 70.

It was also memorable because the Perfect Storm occurred only a little more more than two months after Hurricane Bob, which was the most powerful storm in a generation to hit the Cape. Perhaps this is one reason why this October gale did not make as enduring a mark on the communal memory. It was certainly a much less powerful storm. Its winds only about half as strong as Hurricane Bob’s, and the damage it caused was also much less dramatic than that of the hurricane. In part this was because Hurricane Bob had taken down so many trees that few were left for the gale to topple.

Still, the effects of the Perfect Storm were not insignificant. Along the Brewster shore, where I lived at the time, beach stairs and small boats were swept away and scattered far up and down the shore. One old cottage had its deck completely undermined, so that it hung out over the waves that crashed into the house foundation and splashed up onto the roof. Just east of the cottage an enormous beam, some 15 feet long and three feet square, was being tossed around in the waves like a toy, its end repeatedly banging against the eroding cliffs like a battering ram. 

No town suffered from the storm more than Chatham. Six houses along the shore of Pleasant Bay were lost and another thirty were “severely damaged.” There was also considerable damage to the Town Pier, and town officials feared that the parking lot next to Chatham Light would soon be lost. On Chatham’s North Beach 15 cottages were destroyed.

In Eastham the most dramatic effect of the storm was on the dune line south of the Coast Guard Beach. These dunes, which had been completely destroyed by the Blizzard of ’78, had been slowly rebuilding over the past two decades. Now they were once again completely flattened again by the Perfect Storm.

The gale also breached the dune line in front of the Head of the Pamet River in Truro, the first time this had happened since the Blizzard of ’78. It created a breach in the dunes over 100 feet wide and carried a wide fan of sand and seaweed nearly 500 feet in from the beach, burying several acres of marsh. On the Saturday following the storm, my wife Beth and I drove up to look at the breach. As we walked over the sand that had buried the marsh, she said, “I feel disoriented. It’s as if I’m walking on the floor of the ocean. I thought I knew this place. The ocean was always out there, beyond the dunes, and the land was here, inside of them. Now the sea has penetrated the land and I’m not sure where I am. It’s strange and not right."

Next week Bob will conclude his remembrance of “The Perfect Storm” which hit the Cape and Islands this coming week 25 years ago.

Robert Finch is a nature writer living in Wellfleet. 'A Cape Cod Notebook' won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.