hearings and public interest following the Ash Wednesday Storm of March 1962. 

 This storm devastated major portions of the east coast from North Carolina to 

 Rhode Island and caused the loss of several lives. The Storm Warning Program 

 was a cooperative effort between the Corps and the National Weather Service 

 (NWS). The objectives of the program were to: 



a. Measure, through repetitive surveys, visual observations, and 

 gage measurements, the effects of storms at different 

 localities . 



b_. Better predict storm occurrences and intensities. 



c_. Estimate the storm damage potentials. 



4. Beaches selected for this study included those areas most seriously 

 damaged by the March 1962 storm. The Corps' responsibilities in the effort 

 evolved into the Beach Evaluation Program (BEP) , and other localities were 

 added. The objective of the BEP was to document, through monthly surveys of 

 each study site, patterns of erosion and accretion. Most of the BEP field 

 surveys ended in 1972. 



5. In 1975 a field-oriented project, the "Storm Erosion Studies," was 

 initiated specifically to study coastal storms and to predict their effects 

 (Birkemeier 1979). The surveys resulting from this project were unique 

 because of the timeliness of the poststorm surveys which usually followed the 

 storms by only 1 or 2 days. During the 3 years from 1975 to 1978, three 

 storms of significance were monitored at two of the original BEP sites in New 

 Jersey. 



6. The seven study beaches are shown in Figure 1. The seven sites 

 include Nauset Beach, Massachusetts; Jones and Westhampton Beaches, New York; 

 Misquamicut, Rhode Island; and Long Beach Island, Atlantic City, and Ludlam 

 Beach, New Jersey. Published reports and papers which summarize the long- 

 and short-terra changes at these localities are listed in the Bibliography. 

 These reports include general information about the locality, a discussion of 

 storm effects, documentation of the profile lines, and listings of the survey 

 data. 



7. The present study differs from previous treatments of the data in 

 two respects. Whereas the earlier locality reports addressed changes at a 

 specific beach, this report presents data from a number of beaches for 



