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Pinellas' beaches apparently escape beach erosion from Hurricane Michael

 
The beach on Indian Rocks Beach suffered some erosion from the waves of passing hurricane Michael washing away some of the sand from the recent renourishment project but leaving the dunes intact. (JIM DAMASKE   |   Times)
The beach on Indian Rocks Beach suffered some erosion from the waves of passing hurricane Michael washing away some of the sand from the recent renourishment project but leaving the dunes intact. (JIM DAMASKE | Times)
Published Oct. 16, 2018

Pinellas County's 35 miles of beaches appear to have emerged largely unscathed by Hurricane Michael, according to a preliminary assessment by county officials and University of South Florida experts.

"The impact does not seem to be too bad," Ping Wang, a coastal geology professor from USF, said Monday. "The water did not get very high."

According to Kelli Hammer Levy, the county's environmental management director, the county has received reports of a possible "narrowing" of Pass-A-Grille and Indian Rocks Beach.

"There does seem to be a loss toward the edge," she said Monday. But she added that the sand that washed away may not have gone far, explaining, "It may still be there, and it may come back."

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The sideswipe by Michael was not nearly as bad as the 2012 direct hit from Tropical Storm Debby, which resulted in severe erosion at Pass-a-Grille Beach, Upham Beach and on Treasure Island. Although Debby was far less powerful, the wave action battered those beaches more directly.

In 2006, Tropical Storm Alberto cut 40 feet off Indian Rocks Beach. The No Name Storm of 1993 washed away as much as 70 feet of Upham Beach.

Michael churned through the Gulf at a time when Pinellas was paying a contractor $52 million to rebuild beaches that were eroded by past storms and other damaging events. That beach restoration work has yet to be completed, Levy said. But that means the county may be able to pay this contractor to do some additional work to rebuild any beaches eroded by the storm, rather than waiting to hire a new contractor.

The beaches are the county's major tourist attraction and a major element of the real estate industry. The problem is, the 11 barrier islands where those beaches exist are not fixed in place. They move, waxing here, waning there, pushed and pulled as the waves wash their sand this way and that.

As with all Florida beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, they are extremely vulnerable. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that 70 percent of Gulf beaches are vulnerable to erosion during even the weakest of hurricanes, and 27 percent are likely to be completely inundated.

Storms like Michael and Debby erode a beach with a combination of forces, explained Kara Doran, a scientist with the survey's St. Petersburg-based Coastal and Marine Science Center.

"It's a combination of the storm surge reaching parts of the beach that are not normally underwater, and large waves that are able to reach the dunes and overwash the dunes," she said.

Other parts of the state were not so fortunate, as the storm blasted away entire communities and cut new passes in what had long been solid barrier islands.

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Cape San Blas and other communities saw their biggest dunes washed away. Gulf County was about to start a beach renourishment project, and the contractor pulled out to avoid seeing expensive equipment swept away by the roaring storm surge.

Even a beach far from the action was battered. In Sarasota County, Lido Beach lost up to 2 feet of its dunes.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has dispatched coastal engineers to check on the erosion situation all along the Gulf coast, agency spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said.

Prior to Michael making landfall, experts from the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that up to 75 percent of all Panhandle beaches would be eroded by the storm. Doran said Monday the center was still reviewing its pre-storm and post-storm drone footage to determine whether its prediction came true.

Contact Craig Pittman at craig@tampabay.com. Follow @craigtimes.