Hurricane Helene nibbled at Brevard beaches

Tempered tides and years of beach renourishment projects helped spare our shores from Hurricane Helene's erosive waves that would have otherwise swiped away far more beach.

"The waves didn't reach the dune even in the narrow areas, where I might be worried about it, so I think we came out very fortunate," Mike McGarry, the county's beach renourishment coordinator, said Friday morning, after driving the length of the county's beaches to assess damages. He doesn't anticipate the county will have to file for any federal (FEMA) claims to repair beaches, crossovers or other county structures.

Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Florida Big Bend region Thursday at 11:10 p.m.

Damages in Brevard were minimal.

Erosion worse in Cape Canaveral

Central Brevard saw some notable erosion, such as in Cape Canaveral. But the rest of Brevard's beaches barely flinched. Small "scarps," or miniature cliffs, formed in some spots. Some dunes in the county's mid section appeared to gain sand nudged up by heavy surf. Some sand — not much — got pulled offshore onto sandbars. That typically laps back up in the weeks following a storm, county officials say.

Onshore or northeast winds would have caused much more erosion, McGarry said, but the winds kept parallel to shore.

Sand delayed

Years of multi-million-dollar beach renourisment projects armed Brevard's beaches against Helene's onslaught. Chief among those was a $47.6 million project early this year that began restoring beach and dunes along 11.5 miles from Pineda Causeway to South Spessard Holland Park, shores eroded by Hurricane Ian and Tropical Storm Nicole in 2022.

The project was fully funded by federal emergency appropriations for damages during those two storms.

The $47.6 million project aimed to bring much more sand to the beach this year but was delayed for several weeks because of problems with the dredge. Citing that and "delays in equipment availability," in March the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to focus on building back only the dunes along that stretch of shoreline, instead of the flatter part of the beach. They only had until April 30, though, when all work on the beach must stop because of endangered and threatened sea turtle nesting. Legally, the project can't restart until the nesting season ends in November.

Moon, tides cut beaches a break, too

Moderate tide cycles also helped Brevard beaches as high tides were about foot lower than a week ago, during a full "super moon."

Because the South Beaches area in Brevard generally has the most narrow beaches, that area typically sees the worst erosion dunes, McGarry said. But he didn't notice any significant erosion there Friday, nor any damaged dune crossovers or other structures on any county beaches.

"We just got lucky with Mother Nature," McGarry said. "The fact that we've maintained our beaches all these years has been helpful."

Contact Waymer at (321) 261-5903 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com. Follow him on X at @JWayEnviro.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hurricane Helene nibbled at Brevard beaches