Storm off OBX brings massive waves, flooding

KITTY HAWK, N.C.

Powerful waves pounded Outer Banks beaches Friday - temporarily closing N.C. 12 on Hatteras Island - and are expected to continue their assault through Sunday morning as a low-pressure storm hovers a few hundred miles offshore.

By mid morning Friday, ocean overwash had made N.C. 12 - known locally as Virginia Dare Trail - impassable. Southbound traffic was being stopped just south of Bonner Bridge in the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, and northbound traffic could not travel through Rodanthe. The highway re opened at 6 p.m., though county officials anticipated closures around high tide again today.

In Kitty Hawk around noon, waves much higher than normal - 12 feet in some cases - were crashing on the front steps of oceanfront vacation cottages. Water poured over dunes, flooding N.C. 12 at most intersections.

Though the once-powerful storm is weakening, it has kicked up wind and waves that will likely persist until early next week, said Jeff Lawson, a WVEC-TV meteorologist.

"It should be no worse than today," he said of the next few days.

Roberta Miller, a former Outer Banks resident, watched the action in Kitty Hawk on Friday afternoon.

"People think that hurricanes are so devastating," but it's the nor'easters that hang around for multiple days and "beat the beaches to death," Miller said.

On Friday, crews in some Outer Banks towns reinforced sand dunes before high tide, but officials in Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head said there was little else they could do but wait and see what happens. Kitty Hawk closed the most flooded sections of N.C. 12 to traffic around 1 p.m.

Erin James, (252) 441-1711, erin.james@pilotonline.com