Hurricane Lee Spares Long Island

Long Islanders breathed a sigh of relief last week when Hurricane Lee, once a potent Category 5 storm, passed just a few hundred miles east of Montauk Saturday before making landfall in Nova Scotia. With Lee brewing offshore, residents had visions of Superstorm Sandy, which raked the area in 2012, but were spared when the storm weakened and left only a calling card of high surf and a wash-through on Dune Road in Hampton Bays.

Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman called a state of emergency as Lee barreled northward, a slight jag in its track possibly bringing it over the island. Eastern Maine and western Nova Scotia got the brunt of it, with heavy rain and winds gusting to 52 mph. One person was reported killed by a falling tree.

Schneiderman summoned heavy equipment to close up the breach that formed just west of Shinnecock Inlet near Tiana Beach, dangerously close to the fishing docks at the end of Dune Road. Town highway crews, working with the county Department of Public Works, brought the situation under control while Lee sped past and the surf subsided. Waves washed over the inlet’s eastern groin knocking down a fence and flooding the roadway at the Charles F. Altenkirk Park.

The Outer Beach at Smith Point was closed when heavy surf started eating away at the dune line making passage to Moriches Inlet impossible. “The waves were in the ten-foot range but were not manageable for surfers,” reported Parker Hough of Stony Brook. “Everyone went to the jetties at Long Beach, which were holding the swell pretty well,” he said. “From the point of view of surfers, Lee delivered with overhead waves and some nice tubes.”

The National Hurricane Center started tracking Lee on September 5 after it spun up from a tropical depression in the southernmost reaches of the North Atlantic, halfway between West Africa and South America. Forecast models had it passing close to Long Island but never showing a direct hit. Its calling card of high surf arrived on Wednesday, with gusty winds blowing through the area on Friday and Saturday. Sunday broke warm and sunny with calm seas in the wake of the cyclonic visitor.