Eroding beaches in jeopardy at peak of storm season

The dunes are lost. The next storm could completely overwash Folly Beach County Park. The Washout beach is gone. High tide waves sweep under houses on Sullivan’s Island near Breach Inlet. Sand is being trucked in to shore up the Ocean Club condo and the Ocean Course’s famous, recently restored 18th hole on Isle of Palms.

Those are the “most critically eroded” Charleston-area beaches, according to the S.C. Ocean and Coastal Resource Management.

They are maybe one storm away from the sort of destruction faced little more than five years ago, when millions of dollars were spent on repairs and renourishment. And this season is far from done.

We are at the peak of a 2011 hurricane season that is on track to be one of the most active ever. Already 14 named storms have formed and the immediate future doesn’t look good. Eight of those storms formed in or moved into the Atlantic off the East Coast. A ninth, Tropical Storm Maria, is on track to do the same.

La Nina has formed, the cold Pacific waters that jimmy the jet stream, making it more likely for hurricanes to make landfall on the East Coast.

And most of the damage done so far came from one hurricane, Irene, that passed well off the coast of South Carolina.

Read more in tomorrow’s editions of The Post and Courier.