The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood warning as back-to-back nor’easters battered the area, flooding low-lying areas, such as River Road in Oak Orchard and Cedar Avenue in Lewes, most of the weekend. Route 1 between Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island was closed most of the weekend as well.

Beaches also took a hit, a double whammy of sorts from a similar storm that slammed the coast Sept. 10-11. “This storm made the problem areas worse. There is a lot more scarping along the dunes,” said Mike Powell, an environmental scientist with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Shoreline Management Section.

Those problem areas include Bethany Beach, South Bethany and the north side of Indian River Inlet, Powell said.

He said the storm lasted through six high tides and a new moon. “Although the winds never got as high as predicted, the duration of the storm is what impacted the area,” he said.

Powell said tons upon tons of sand have been washed off the beaches from Rehoboth Beach to Fenwick Island. “The sand bars off the coast are phenomenally large,” he said.

He said, for at least a little while, the profile of the beaches has been changed with waves breaking on sandbars about 50 yards off shore. “They are really dramatic,” he said. “In a different way they are still providing protection.”

Powell said the beach has already started to rebuild itself, and with calm weather predicted for the rest of the week, some sand will return to the wet portion of the beach. It will take several weeks of calm weather for sand to build up the dunes and the dry section of the beaches, he said.

If more storms strike over the next month or so, that process will be slowed and could spill over into next spring.

“Any storm delays the sand getting back on the beach. If we have a calm November, we will see a huge recovery,” he said.