The Outer Banks of North Carolina are shifting barrier islands, and have been for a long, long time. They are not meant to be static and unchangeable. And, the OBX have always been prone to storms due to their location. This has nothing to do with any version of climate change, natural or man-caused. But, the doomsday climate cult has to be a part of everything
The NC 12 conundrum: How do you maintain a vital OBX highway that keeps disappearing?
He wishes you could know what it’s like to be arcing high over the Oregon Inlet with your pickup truck’s lights barely cutting the heavy darkness pressing in from all sides. He wishes that you could see the grains of sand flashing across your field of vision then disappearing again. He even wishes that you could strain your eyes attempting to find the center line for just an instant, that you could feel that moment of uncertainty when you wonder if your tires are still on the road.
“It’s like entering a world that you’ve never been in before,†Ryder said on a sunny June day, sitting inside his office in Manteo.
Ryder, the N.C. Department of Transportation maintenance official who oversees all of North Carolina’s Highway 12 through the Outer Banks, is confident that making that drive one time would be enough to convince people to never do so again in times of peril.
I’m assuming the “peril” is storms because you drove a fossil fueled vehicle. Thanks!
Ryder and his team take care of N.C. 12, a 148-mile, mostly two-lane road that runs from Corolla to Ocracoke before continuing on to Sea Level on the mainland. When a storm comes, it’s Ryder’s team that drives out in low tide to see what damage waves have inflicted on the road, and his team that piles into bulldozers to push sand off of the asphalt and back into dunes, trying to protect the road against an ocean that grows persistently closer.
Yup, storms. Which never ever happened before the Industrial Revolution and carbon pollution going over 350ppm.
The department is tasked not only with keeping the road open now against encroaching sand and sea, but also with envisioning its future on ever-shifting barrier islands pinched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. Climate change makes both of those tasks more difficult, particularly on the Outer Banks where sea levels are rising more rapidly than in other parts of North Carolina.
How do they know? Where’s the data that shows this? NOAA doesn’t have long term tide gauges there. The ones in Duck and the Oregon Inlet are too short term. The next nearest, at Beaufort, NC, is 3.29mm per year of rise, which equates to 1.08 feet per 100 years, which is still below what’s expected for a Holocene warm period. Wilmington, NC, shows .84 feet per 100 years.
Anyhow, this continues on and on, with cult dogma about islands that naturally shift and roads getting destroyed being your fault. What’s the point of this screed, other than to scaremongering?
Our esteemed host quoted:
While NC 12 continues on Okracoke Island, there is no bridge between its end on Hatteras Island and Okracoke; you have to take the famed Okracoke ferry to get across. people who have been there know that, but the article author doesn’t seem to understand.