Skip to main content
Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

Holiday 2011

Main Street in Creswell was still flooded days after Irene.

Dec 15, 2011

In Irene’s Wake

You spun yourself From thick strands of salt water And a fever in the tropics, wove Your fabric coarse Around the edges, your eye Opening like a net Cast over Cape Lookout.
image: Fresh Deviled Clams.

Dec 15, 2011

Mariner’s Menu: Serve Up Seasonal Offerings

Share a taste of seasonal seafood with your friends and family this winter. Include these dishes in your next holiday dinner. Whether you have something traditional and filling like oyster stew in mind, or something more zesty and exciting like orange-nutmeg flounder, these recipes from Mariner's Menu: 30 Years of Fresh Seafood Ideas by Joyce Taylor are sure to impress.

Dec 15, 2011

Naturalist’s Notebook: Sand: Hold a Mountain in Your Hand

Sand...we play in it, we stroll on it, we make castles out of it, we spread our beach towels on it. But what do we really know about it?
Rusty and April Taylor from Harkers Island work on their business plan after taking the workshops online.

Dec 15, 2011

Winds of Change: Shrimpers Plan for the Future

This Sneads Ferry shrimper understands that knowing how to read shifting tides and winds of change is key to survival. It's the way of the watermen — using natural instincts to keep them safely afloat in an unpredictable and often risky environment.
The Scuppernong River overflowed its banks and flooded Creswell.

Dec 15, 2011

And the Rain Came Down

Days before Hurricane Irene hit the state, Spencer Rogers, North Carolina Sea Grant coastal erosion specialist, raced up and down the coast to install wave gauges. He had to keep pace with changing forecast paths. "We put three on Topsail because we were running out of time," he recalls.
Tracks like up at the ocean to load sand for the new road base.

Dec 15, 2011

N.C. 12: Back in Business

Irene breached Hatteras Island in several spots, leaving islanders with no land route to the mainland. The N.C. Department of Transportation worked day and night to open N.C. 12 again, refilling breaches to the south and building a temporary bridge on Pea Island.

blue stormy ocean waves with white foam

Dec 15, 2011

Inner Banks Take a Beating: Storm Surge Surprised Many

The oceanfront areas were not the only ones affected by Irene. Jerry Allegood visits the Inner Banks, along the sounds and the rivers, and chronicles the destruction Irene left behind.
Hurricane Irene severely damaged a pier.

Dec 15, 2011

Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

Several months after Hurricane Irene washed out roads and left homes, cars and other property — as well as livelihoods and dreams — moldering in the sand, North Carolina's coastal communities are mending.