SLAUGHTER BEACH, DE- Strong winds and high waters from an ongoing coastal storm battered Slaughter Beach, taking much of the beach and causing severe damage to the shoreline.
This past weekend, the first nor'easter of the fall season hit Delmarva, bringing high winds and heavy rains that impacted many coastal communities, including Slaughter Beach.
Sherry Kring, a neighbor of Slaughter Beach, says her home sits right on the beach, and high waters washed away much of her backyard.
"The surf was the big issue. It came up about ten feet — in addition to the ten feet that it came up during the last storm — so we lost a little bit of the dune there."
Bianca Beary, a neighbor of Slaughter Beach, says the strong waves during the storm were unusual for the Delaware Bay, which she describes as the most significant part of the storm.
"There were terrible waves. We never have waves because we're between the bay and the ocean, so we never get anything."
Even younger neighbors, like Jack Beary, who is visiting his grandmother at Slaughter Beach, noticed the storm's intensity.
"Yesterday it was really, really windy, and the waves were really, really, really big."
By morning, Beary says that when she and her grandchildren went to the beach to walk their dogs, they discovered much of their backyard beach had vanished.
"We go for a walk every day with the dogs, and there was no place to walk. It was gone."
The waves hit the southern end of Slaughter Beach the hardest, carving out the sand and leaving deep drop-offs where dunes once stood.
Joy Feulner, another neighbor, says the storm's impact on the beach's southern end caused severe coastal damage, bringing waters dangerously close to many homes and leaving barely any beach.
"The other end is having a really hard problem because they have a very deep drop-off. I've never seen that before."
The storm also caused flooding in parts of town, covering streets and leaving the town's entrances underwater. While much of the southern entrance flooding has mostly cleared, Cedar Beach Road at the northern entrance remains submerged.
Beary says that yesterday, while leaving town to run errands, she encountered high waters on the roads, which she describes as frightening.
"Going to the grocery store on Bay Avenue — it was perfectly flat, no problem — until all of a sudden my car just stopped with high water almost up to the door."
Neighbors are weathering the waves and rolling with the tide, pushing through the storm, which is expected to wrap up Tuesday.
Slaughter Beach Mayor Harry Ward says the town plans to scale back most emergency operations as winds begin to die down.