Dr. Charles Flagg took another flight over the Breach at Old Inlet on Fire Island on April 13, 2016. The flyover mosaic is available below.
Dr. Flagg provided the following comments
Low tide at Bellport was at 11:18 AM while the flight was around noon so many of the sand islands were visible. However, the water in the breach was rather murky from the earlier ebb flow. The width of the breach, about 450m, remains the same it has been since the first of the year when both the east and west spits were removed by storms. The new developments are an expansion of the sand area just north of the western shore, the development of a bulge in the shore to the southwest of the breach and the apparent absence of the ebb shoal. The south shore bulge is close to the area where a sand island was formed last April. The disappearance of the ebb shoal is a bit strange as it usually shows up near low tide and has been a permanent if variable feature of the photos since the beginning.
The development of the large expanse of sand shoals to the north and west of the main channel is beginning to look very similar to the western side of Old Inlet and Ridge Island to the north. The only thing missing is the westward growth of the eastern. We’ll see what the spring-summer seasons bring.
Mark Lang has assembled all the geo-referenced photo mosaics into a kml file that can be viewed using Google Earth. By clicking between images and using the fade in-out button you can clearly see how the inlet is changing with time. An offline version of the KML file is available asKMZ.
For more information, please visit Dr. Charles Flagg’s website.
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