Irene video - Stratford Point

As Hurricane Irene approached, Twan and I boarded up Stratford Point as best we could while pulling in all of the loose objects and things like our Purple Martin gourds. We also took the time to set up Twan's great idea - a plant camera that takes photos every 30 seconds so that it could record the storm. He put this together to make the video below. We put it on a pole facing the low energy side, looking north towards Short Beach and Stratford with the mouth of the Housatonic on the right side.



The worst winds from Irene occurred overnight, so we missed a lot of that in the video, but you can see how high the water comes and the large waves on what is again the low energy side. The high energy side, facing southward into Long Island Sound, took a huge hit. Much of the seawall was damaged or destroyed, and the water came quite far onto the land. We had thought the water would build in even higher to where we put the camera but we were wrong as it just went straight over the land on the south side. I do not think we could have put the camera facing the Sound, though, as it would have blown off or been destroyed faster. As it was, the camera was broken in the early afternoon of that Sunday where the video ends.

We wish we could have used a video camera or live feed in HD, and in the future, we may be able to during big storms, whether it be tropical or a snowy nor'easter.


Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician