5/31/18 Report - Illustration Showing How Sand is Moved. Deadly Lightning.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Shallow Water Sand Spit

As you probably know, I spend a lot of time talking about how sand and other items move on a beach and in the shallow water.  That is critical information for any detectorist who wants to understand what is going on and where coins and things will most likely be found.  Today I'm going to try to show a developing sand spit.

In the above photo, there is a sand spit that runs from the bottom right of the photo to near the top center of the photo.  I'll outline that below.

Also there was water hitting the spit from two directions.  I'll also try to highlight that.

The predominant direction of the waves is illustrated by the blue line labeled A.  In deeper water that was the direction (from the upper right corner towards the center of the picture ) of all the wind driven waves.  As you can see things were different in the shallow water.

Near the orange circle, labeled D, there seemed to be a point where the waves bent and came up onto the sand bar as shown by C.  I watched this a little earlier before the bar was covered by water and waves were coming from about two o'clock and there were also waves hitting the bar from about 10 o'clock.  I wish I had my camera at that time.

The orange spot (D) would be the first place I'd check with a metal detector, however the dip was not nearly deep enough at this time.

The waves coming onto the bar from the left were getting bent and breaking on the sand spit.  You could see how the spit was bending the waves coming from that direction.

The following illustration shows waves hitting the spit from both the right and left.

Yellow Lines Indicate Waves Coming From Left
and Orange Lines Indicate Waves Coming From Right.

I came back the next morning and, as you would expect, the spit had changed a little.  The tide was lower and you could see more of the sand.  It had changed a little, but you can still see the waves wrapping around the point.

The water was funneling through the low spot and then encountering the slope, and having no where to go, piled up on the slope and the spit.  The waves appear to slow wherever it is shallower.  That causes the waves to bend.  There was undoubtedly also some water bouncing off the hump of sand at the upper left and bouncing back towards the spit.

Layers of Sand Built Up On Left Side of Spit.

Pshewww!  I finally got that done.  I spent a lot of time trying to upload a video but never got it to work.

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A Lake Worth woman was killed by lightning.

https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/weather/lake-worth-woman-killed-lightning-strike-parkland-injured/Chbg6q5PcbM71opQGjpF6I/

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I spent a lot of time on the illustration above.  I'll get back to some other things I had planned in then near future.

Check out the TGBottleBarn.blogspot.com.

I'll keep adding Treasure Coast bottles as I get a chance.

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On the Treasure Coast have a one foot surf for a few days.  That makes for easy shallow water hunting.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net