Okay, I have definitely been remiss in updating my blog, since my last post was almost a month ago. Oops!
So, there were some BIG storms here hitting the coast of CA in January 2023. Atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones were among the words being thrown around. I fared all right – my apartment is probably about a half mile uphill from the ocean and not near any rivers so I didn’t really have to worry about flooding. And I didn’t lost power for any great length of time, so that was good.
After the storm cleared out I decided to walk down along Carmel Beach to see what it looked like. I’m adding a lot of photos to this post and maybe not too many words, just to show you how much sand was removed. I’ll have to dig around and find a ‘before’ photo so you can see the difference!
The first thing I’ll say is, that water is normally 10 ft lower than what it’s showing now, and the photo does not do justice to how much sand was eroded from the upper part of the beach. It was still a bit windy and misty but the big rain was done.
View towards Pebble Beach:
The big grey rocks are normally way under the sand so you wouldn’t even know they were there!
Water all the way up to the cliff (‘normally’ it wouldn’t be that close)
I continued walking further, heading towards Carmel River Beach
I don’t know how many times I’ve walked by this and never seen it before, but how cute!
Carmel River Beach – it was CRAZY! And it’s hard to tell but in the background Carmel River had breeched the beach from the lagoon to the ocean (good to avoid flooding along the river, but bad because you can’t cross the beach to get to the hiking trails on the other side (over by Betty White’s house you may remember from a previous post)
This was along the walk back to Carmel Beach
In this shot you may be able to make out the green-roofed Frank Lloyd Wright house in the distance. 
Okay. Next post I’ll show you photos from a few days after this, when the sun was out and things seem a little bit calmer!