Dr. Charles Flagg took another flight over the Breach at Old Inlet on Fire Island on June 30, 2016. The flyover mosaic is available below. Dr. Flagg provided the following report:
We carried out a photo overflight of the breach area Sunday, January 15th, around 2:30PM. At that time, water levels in Bellport Bay were relatively low and several of the sand islands were exposed.
We haven’t had any major nor’easters this fall so the changes in the breach area show a continuation of the gradual development that we have seen over the past year. The biggest surprise was that the shoal in the middle of the channel between the remains of Pelican Island and the eastern shore, had surfaced. Other than this development, the flood delta remains much as it has been. The eastern shoreline of the breach has continued the gradual westward growth that started in August so that now the minimum shore to shore width of the breach is about 230 meters, as compared to approximately 500 meters a year ago. The deep part of the channel that flows along the western shore is now about 80 meters wide. The exit channel to the ocean remains heading off to the east and the ebb shoal extends quite far to the west. A year ago the exit channel trailed off to the southwest. And there is a sizeable sand shoal extending off to the south and east from the western shore that marks the offshore edge of the exit channel. It looks like there is a lot of sand there as well as just west of the eastern tip. Whether this sand is going in or out of the breach is unclear but things are clearly changing.
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 as KMZ.
For more information, please visit Dr. Charles Flagg’s website.
