OC Unfiltered >> Stormy weather I have known

Last Updated on Thursday, March 01, 2012 07:38 pm Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, March 02, 2012 01:00 pm

What’s the lowest point in Ocean City? It’s pretty much everywhere I’ve lived.

For the past 30 years, I’ve suffered flood damage and losses at three different addresses, have owned hip-waders, not as a fashion statement, but as a wardrobe necessity, and experienced the unparalleled joy of slogging through thigh-high water in search of a dry patch so my 4-pound dog can do its business without doggie paddling.

For all these years, I believed that I had not endured the worst flooding this city has seen. I was right ... but for the wrong reason.

I have not survived the worst flooding this city has seen because I wasn’t here (or even alive) during the September 1944 hurricane, which brought record flood tides of 9 feet to the island. Yet for all these years, I’d been under the impression the worst flooding occurred during the 1962 Great Atlantic Storm, aka the Ash Wednesday storm, aka The BIG One, which pummeled the city 19 years before I moved here.

As everyone will tell you, the ’62 storm is the barometer by which all other storms are measured. But the ’62 storm barely makes the city’s Top 5.

Worse than ’62 were Sept. 27, 1985, and Dec. 11, 1992, both of which saw flood tides of 8.8 feet. The former was Hurricane Gloria, which deposited 18 inches of water in my newly purchased and painted condo at 1301 Haven Ave., the latter was a nasty nor’easter that drowned both of my cars at 1017 Bay Ave., directly across from the 10th Street lagoon. Steve Kelly, an Ocean City land surveyor, puts the bay side of 13th Street among the lowest elevations in the city at 3.6 feet. The bay side of 10th Street isn’t much higher at 4.1 feet.

The March 6-8, 1962 nor’easter is tied for fifth place with Hurricane Belle, which sloshed ashore on Aug. 9, 1976, with flood tides of 8.6 feet. To put this in perspective, neither of these storms qualifies to be classified as severe tidal flooding, since that distinction begins at 8.7 feet.

The Halloween storm of 1991, with 8.2-foot tides, is tied for 11th on the list with two other storms, yet it distinguishes itself – not because it gave life to both a book and a movie titled “The Perfect Storm” – but because I clearly remember standing outside on the second-floor deck of my home videotaping a massive ice chest as it floated from Ninth to 11th street along Bay Avenue. Inside the house, my 5-week-old son slept.

Tied for 14th are three storms, all unforgettable, with 8.1-foot tides. The first, on March 29, 1984, is memorable for the sheer stupidity my sister and I exhibited while experiencing our first major storm event while living in Ocean City. We stood on the boardwalk at Brighton Place, watching the water rush beneath our feet and surge in and out of the shattered windows of the condos behind us on the beach. I still remember shredded curtains hanging in the missing windows. Finally, realizing what morons we were to be standing on a pile of boards while the ocean raged below us, we left the boardwalk and my sister drove to work, promptly plowing her car into the lake that Second and West had become.

The other two storms – Oct. 17, 2009, and Nov. 13, 2009 – are both listed with flood tides of 8.1 feet, but the Veteran’s Day storm was by far the more dangerous. As tide upon tide piled up for three days, I wasn’t able to leave my house in Merion Park without wearing hip-waders, my son was diagnosed with swine flu and had to cancel a college visitation to North Carolina, and my daughter unreasonably insisted on being driven to Stockton to take a mid-term.

Since my car was parked in Marmora, I had to walk 1.5 miles in punishing wind and rain, over the 34th Street Bridge, to get the car before I could get her off the island. Soaked to the skin despite three layers of clothes, I got into the car and began to drive back toward the island only to find the police beginning to set up a blockade to prevent traffic from coming into town. I drove around the blockade, picked up my daughter and took her to Stockton. We returned hours later to find the situation much worse than we had left it.

My plan to piggy-back my daughter through high water and put her down to walk across front lawns proved a complete fantasy. There were no front lawns. The flood waters were up to everyone’s front steps in Merion Park. There was no way I could carry a 20-year-old a mile through moving water that high. I gave my daughter my hip waders, I rolled my sweat pants up to my crotch, and together we walked home, me feeling for the sidewalk beneath my stocking-ed feet. Landmarks like fire hydrants didn’t exist; they were under water. Stepping off curbs to cross streets meant entering hip-high water.

Officials said it was the worst flooding on the island in 17 years. From what I experienced, it was the worst flooding I’ve ever endured.

At No. 17, tied with two other storms, is the Mother’s Day storm of May 12, 2008, which was actually a Monday. Flood tide measured 8.0 feet for this one. The city’s schools were dismissed early so that the buses could beat the tides, and my son asked if a friend could come over that afternoon to our flood-prone home. Sure, I said, then asked him, “How’s he going to get here?”

“Kayak,” my son said.

I passed his friend on Oxford Lane minutes later, leisurely paddling his kayak. Wearing hip-waders, with three dogs tucked into my arms, I struggled north against the wind in search of an elusive blade of grass that would suffice as a dog park in a flood.

There have been so many other floods, including some that have crept in beneath blankets of snow. One particularly stinky flood occurred in January 1996, and although this one fails to make any official list, news reports from that time record the storm tides at 8 to 8.5 feet. I remember my neighbors moving their furniture from their first floor to their second as a precaution against water entering their house.

When the floods receded and the snow went out on the tide, hundreds of unfortunate fish didn’t make the return trip to the marsh and the Intracoastal Waterway. At one point, there were so many black birds enjoying their free lunch on our lawn that it looked like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

I find it odd that the 8.5-foot flood tides of Jan. 4, 1992, and March 3, 1994, rank seventh on the all-time list, yet I do not remember them, nor do I remember the 8.2-foot flood tide of Feb. 5, 1998, which is tied for 11th. I don’t remember anything remarkable about Jan. 28, 1998, or Oct. 7, 2006, yet these, at 8 feet, are both tied for 17th with the Mother’s Day storm, which I recall in vivid detail.

Tied for 20th are six storms that fell short of 8 feet, with flood tides of 7.9 feet. I don’t remember any of the five of those six that occurred during the years I’ve lived here: Jan. 2, 1987; March 19, 1996; Jan. 25, 2000; May 25, 2005; and Jan. 31, 2006. I don’t remember the floods of Dec. 14, 1993, and April 18, 2007, which measured 7.8 feet, or a flood of 7.7 feet that came on my birthday (Dec. 13) in 1996. I don’t remember the 7.7-foot flood tides of Nov. 15, 1981; Nov. 14, 1997; Jan. 3, 1999; June 13, 2007; June 22, 2009; and April 16, 2011.

What do I remember? I remember the storms that caused damage, the storms that were tied to events involving my children, and the storms that had my out-of-town relatives calling in concern.

Here is what I know: There have been so many storms that they begin to blur, making recall of each one impossible. It’s a fact of island life. Sink or swim.

Email the author at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it