Last week’s storms may have dumped massive mounds of muck on Southland beaches, but in Newport Beach, those same storms swept something away: sand.
“The storms came in with a diagonal attack on the beach, with waves and high
tides,” Newport Lifeguard Battalion Chief Mitch White told Brianna Bailey of the Daily Pilot. “That cuts
away the sand and creates a longshore current that comes up and sweeps the
beach.”
About 50 feet of sand was lost. Work crews using front-end loaders moved about a dozen lifeguard towers farther up the beach to keep them from floating out to sea.
But the sand didn’t go far. “Every winter, we lose an area of beach, but by the following
fall, it builds back up again," said Tara Finnigan, a spokeswoman for the city of
Newport Beach. "That sand doesn’t go too far off shore.”
— Jill-Marie Jones in Orange County