Sand Beach in Winter: Acadia's Migrating Beach

Storm waves drag sand out to sea along Acadia's coast. NPS.

By Catherine Schmitt, Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park.

In winter, snow covers Sand Beach's dune except for the pale tips of beach grass, and deep-blue waves roll the wet sand in the low sun.

Why the beach stays

Sand always wants to move, yet Sand Beach in Acadia National Park has lasted thousands of years:

• Geography: it faces south, catching sand driven ashore by wind and waves, and steep granite peninsulas on both sides keep it from washing away.
• Old Soaker: an offshore rock ledge breaks the surf, slowing the water so fine particles settle.
• Biology: the "sand" is mostly shell. About seventy percent is bits of barnacle, mussel, urchin and snail — a carbonate beach, rare this far north — resupplied as new marine animals settle in the cove each year.

The seasons

• Winter waves scour the beach, pulling fine sand into the cove and leaving coarser grains in shelves, scarps and ridges. At the east end, a tidal inlet meets fresh water from the wetlands behind the dune, fed by rain and snowmelt from Champlain Mountain and The Beehive.
• Summer south winds push sand back, burying the low-tide rocks, sealing the inlet with fine pinkish-gold sand, and building up the dune that helps hold the beach — a fragile dune visitors are asked to protect.

Storms

Storms — hurricanes and winter nor'easters — shape the beach most.

• The Blizzard of 1978: University of Maine oceanographers Bruce Nelson and Ken Fink found the beach flattened and ten to fifteen feet of dune gone.
• The Patriot's Day Storm, April 2007: it destroyed the dune fence, cut into the dune, stripped the beach to its boulders, and exposed the remains of an early twentieth-century shipwreck, now a protected resource. More than eight vertical feet of sand went in one storm, but, said Park Ranger Michael Marion, "Most of the sand stayed in the cove, and the beach slowly rebuilt over the ensuing few years."

A changing coast

Storms are growing stronger and more frequent, and high tides higher. Sea level is already eight inches above 1950 and rising faster — now over an inch per decade. Waves regularly reach the dune and the stairs from the parking lot, and in October 2019 a storm set off a small landslide at the beach's west end, where erosion is undercutting a bluff of sand and clay.

Still, the winds will shift, and the sand will be back in time for summer. Learn more in the story of Sand Beach and a day at Sand Beach.

Sources

Based on "Sand Beach in Winter," by Catherine Schmitt, Schoodic Institute, Acadia National Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Photographs credited to the Schoodic Institute are left out.