he Town of Topsail Beach suffered a tremendous amount 

 of dune escarpment and loss of sand on our beaches. We had nine 

 separate breaches in the dunes. Fortunately, the breaches occurred in the 

 latter phases of the storm, which minimized flooding behind the dunes. 

 Most of the dune walkovers, both private and public, were either destroyed 

 or experienced heavy damage. 



he legacy of Ophelia is going to be what appears to be 

 record-setting soundside flooding. For a week prior to the storm making 

 landfall, winds pushed water out of the Pamlico Sound towards the 

 Banks. The full moon was the Saturday after Opehlia and we knew the 

 worst-case scenario would be if the storm moved slowly, then hit at high 

 tide — and that's what happened. 



Considering that it was a slow storm that hit us at the worst 

 possible time, the beaches took a very small hit. We had some spotty 

 dune erosion. But the day after the storm you couldn't tell a hurricane 

 had been there from looking at the beaches. We did lose some acreage 

 on the sound side, which is hard to recover once it is lost because there 

 is no sediment supply coming in to build it back up. Given the duration 

 of the storm, overall we fared very well. 



Continued 

 COASTWATCH 



