Long Beach faces highest tide of the month after flooding
Long Beach faces highest tide of the month
Long Beach’s highest tide of the month is expected Tuesday evening after water reached Bay Shore Avenue for a second night.
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Long Beach's biggest tide of the month is expected to peak near seven feet Tuesday evening, a day after high water already climbed the steps and pushed onto Bay Shore Avenue.
FOX 11's Andres Gutierrez reported live from the block as neighbors described watching the water rise for the second night in a row. The city's marine bureau says it isn't changing its plan, and a Cal State Long Beach professor says the flooding offers a preview of what rising seas could bring. One more high tide is expected Wednesday before the water backs off.
What's next:
Tuesday evening's high tide was expected to top out at almost seven feet in Long Beach, the biggest of the month. It came a day after high water climbed the steps and pushed onto Bay Shore Avenue Monday night. Unlike the peninsula, Bay Shore Avenue has no sand berm protecting it, just a seawall. Neighbors Mia Lomas Blankenship and her husband, Randy, noticed people outside with flashlights Monday night and found water reaching the wall along their street. They moved trash cans to the corner so the rising water wouldn't carry them off.
The backstory:
This week's new moon lined up with the sun, pulling the ocean into the highest tides of the month. Hank Perrin has lived along Bay Shore Avenue for about 50 years, and he says the flooding used to be rare. Long Beach's marine bureau manager, Todd Leland, told FOX 11 that crews are running the same operation they used through the big tides in June and July, building up the peninsula's sand berm before every high tide and expecting to lose part of it.
What they're saying:
Mia Lomas Blankenship, who lives along Bay Shore Avenue, described the moment she realized the water had risen: "We noticed a lot of people walking around with lights, and we're like, 'What's going on?' So when we looked out here, we noticed all the water was all the way up to the wall," Blankenship said.
Her husband, Randy, said: "The trash cans and stuff were moving around, so my wife and I actually moved the trash cans down to the corner over there," Randy said.
Hank Perrin said the flooding has changed dramatically since he first moved to the block: "It's unusual. You know, when I first moved here a long time ago, when the water touched the wall, it was a big deal. Now it's an occurrence almost monthly, I would say. It's pretty common now," Perrin said.
Christine Whitcraft, a professor of biological sciences at Cal State Long Beach, connected the flooding to a bigger pattern: "What we're seeing with these high tides is that real-world look at sea level rise interacting with a naturally occurring tidal cycle. It sort of gives us a look at what the future might be," Whitcraft said.
Later, Mia Lomas Blankenship joked about how the block copes: "My husband always jokes around, 'Well, we got our boogie boards, or we can jump on them,'" Blankenship said.
What's next:
Wednesday's high tide is expected around 9:40 p.m., the last of this stretch before the water backs off. Leland said calm surf this week, forecast at just one to two feet, gives him confidence the sand berm will keep water out of peninsula neighborhoods, the same way it has since June. But Whitcraft said sand is only a short-term answer, and protecting streets long-term means building something that doesn't have to be rebuilt every season. The city's bigger plan is a $14.5 million dredging project that could start in late October and push the beach out about 260 feet.