If you live on Long Island you’ve no doubt noticed the cold weather, so this is for all of my readers who’ve moved away and miss it here.
With daily highs in the teens and twenties and nighttime lows in the single digits, it’s been pretty darn cold. As dangerous and expensive as the cold weather can be there’s something about extreme weather conditions that excites me.
I know, all you folks in the Midwest are laughing, but for those of us here on The Island, single digit temperatures are not all that common.
The first thing I do when it’s been cold like this for a while is check to see if the bay is frozen, sure enough…
Here are some pictures taken yesterday morning on my way to the barber shop:
In the cold steaming chimneys like this one are a common sight.
Looking west: A half moon hovers over the frozen Great South Bay.
On her way to the Atlantic to fish for clams the dragger Susan H slowly cuts through the ice. Visible on the right is the Ocean Beach water tower.
Hey Long Island Guy,
I just wanted to say I love the site. I watch all your clips on YouTube as well. Nice to see someone take so much pride in their home. I am the same way.
I was wondering if you guys are local to Islip? I think I recognize the boat behind you in the scallop shucking film. Are you guys down by Whitecap?
I love your son’s boat too, I used to have an 17 foot Garvey pilothouse but I recently purchased an old down east pilot with a small cuddy.
Just wanted to say I love your work. Thanks so much for the effort.
Take care,
Tom Costello – 24 Bay Shore
Tom,
Thanks for the kind words. It nice to know that all my hard work on this site is appreciated.
Here is another shot of my son’s boat, a 23′ Thomas Marine. It’s all aluminum and very heavy. It used to be at Whitecap, but now it’s elsewhere, and this weekend we’re hauling it for maintenance. Won’t launch again until spring.
-Bill
I was tooling around in wine country yesterday afternoon and got to enjoy a little snowy scenery in Southold.
This little vineyard is right around the block from my mom’s house. Passing it on my way home in the snowstorm, I snapped this picture in the blue light of dusk.
I took a ride to the Fire Island Lighthouse over the weekend and was surprised to see how much beach we lost already this winter.
Staff at the lighthouse reported that 2 unbroken lighthouse bulbs from the 1940’s were exposed from the eroding dune face and donated to the museum by the finder. I think that’s pretty darn cool and have wonder if I would have been so generous as to donate both bulbs.
Here are some photos of the beach showing the loss of sand and some of the interesting things that appear when the sand is washed away.
This boardwalk used to extend over the dune and onto the beach. Here we can see that about half of the primary dune is gone.
Here is an aerial view of the same boardwalk before the washout. there used to be over 200 feet of beach. Now there’s only about 100 feet left.
Here an old push mower is seen along with some other things that I could not identify.
Look closely at this picture and you see a piece of dune fence sticking out of the dune like the ribs of some giant monster.
An old piling from a pier or maybe even a house.
A family examines a deposit of surf clams near the top of the dune.
Loss of sand is pretty common on Fire Island during the winter, and in many cases the sand comes back during the spring. I do think however, that it is going to take a long time to rebuild that dune.
While some people were afraid it might be too cold out or that there’d be too much sand on the beach 🙂 yours truly braved the sand, sea and bitter cold to bring you this beautiful Long Island sunrise.
Way off in the distance you can just make out Fire Island as a dark band on the horizon.
While I was wandering the beach I came across this horseshoe crab frozen to the eelgrass that’s been washed ashore.
Horseshoe crabs are one of my favorite sea creatures. They’re perfectly harmless in spite of the way they look, have great medical potential, and have been around for millions of years.
The morning was finger-numbing cold, clear, and absolutely beautiful. Hope we have much more of the same on Long Island in 2009.