Nor’easter’s long siege floods the coast from Florida to Long Island and closes the road to Hatteras Island

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — A slow-moving nor’easter has spent days pushing the Atlantic into the East Coast. By Wednesday, coastal flood alerts ran from northeast Florida to Long Island, and on North Carolina’s Hatteras Island the National Weather Service was warning residents to be ready to be cut off for days.

The Weather Service’s Newport/Morehead City office kept coastal flood warnings in effect for Hatteras and Ocracoke islands until 8 p.m. Wednesday. It forecast up to 2 to 4 feet of water above ground in low-lying areas near the shore and tidal waterways. “There is a possibility of being stranded on Hatteras Island for multiple days,” the Hatteras warning said early Wednesday. “This could be life threatening if you have an emergency.”

N.C. Highway 12, the only road onto the island, has been closed between the Marc Basnight Bridge and Rodanthe since about 6 p.m. Monday. Ocean overwash breached protective dunes near the Pea Island Visitor Center, the Island Free Press reported, citing the state Department of Transportation. Dare County said in an update cited by the paper that crews were rebuilding about 1,000 feet of dunes lost overnight. No reopening time had been announced. Dare County declared a state of emergency and ordered visitors off Hatteras Island before the storm, the National Park Service said.

A long-duration storm

Forecasters have stressed duration more than peak intensity. “This is a long-duration event. Do not let your guard down, we still have multiple days and high tide cycles to get through!” the Newport/Morehead City office wrote in its Tuesday afternoon briefing. It said substantial erosion had already occurred, with overwash on side streets from Mirlo Beach through Rodanthe and “major overwash” around the Pea Island Visitor Center. Water levels at high tide through Thursday were expected to be “similar to or HIGHER than” what the area had already seen.

The office rated coastal impacts on the Outer Banks “high,” level 3 of 4, through Wednesday and into Thursday morning. Winds and seas are forecast to ease Thursday, but coastal flooding could continue into Friday.

From Florida to Long Island

The storm’s reach is wider than the Outer Banks. As of early Wednesday, the Weather Service had coastal flood advisories posted for:

• Virginia Beach, where a coastal flood warning takes effect at 3 p.m. Wednesday and runs to 9 a.m. Thursday, with 1 to 2 feet of water expected in low-lying areas and 7- to 10-foot breakers in the surf zone;
• Hampton Roads and the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck of Virginia, plus Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore (Dorchester, Wicomico and Somerset counties) and its ocean beaches, with some advisories running into Friday morning;
• Delaware’s beaches and the New Jersey shore from Ocean County to Cape May through Wednesday night, with more elevated high tides expected after that;
• Southern Nassau and southwest Suffolk counties on Long Island for Wednesday afternoon and evening high tides;
• Northeast Florida’s St. Johns and Flagler coasts and parts of the lower St. Johns River into Thursday.

Most of those advisories call for up to a foot of water in vulnerable spots, enough to close low roads and flood parking lots and yards. The Weather Service said the Virginia Beach warning reflected an “elevated threat of property damage to homes and businesses near the waterfront.”

A familiar weak point

For Hatteras Island, the storm is the latest test of an eroding barrier island that federal and state agencies have struggled to manage. Thirty-two privately owned houses have collapsed onto Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches since 2020, in Rodanthe and Buxton, according to a National Park Service tally. Several collapsed during nor’easters. The park said before this storm that several oceanfront houses in Rodanthe remained “structurally compromised and at risk of collapse,” with exposed septic systems. It warned that debris from a collapse can be carried for miles along the seashore.

The park has bought and removed two threatened Rodanthe houses using Land and Water Conservation Fund money. It helped set up an interagency work group on threatened structures in 2022, which produced a state report in 2024, the agency says. Residents have pressed for faster action. In a February post on the N.C. Department of Insurance’s site, Outer Banks residents argued that dredging, dune-building along Highway 12 and a terminal groin at Oregon Inlet have starved the island of sand, and called for emergency jetty repairs, elevated causeways and nearshore reefs.

The stretch of Highway 12 south of the Basnight Bridge is “highly vulnerable to overwash during prolonged periods of strong northeast winds and large surf,” the Park Service warned on Oct. 17. That describes the storm that has lingered since the weekend. Travelers can check DriveNC.gov for road conditions, and the Weather Service posts water-level forecasts at water.noaa.gov.

The National Park Service’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore said Wednesday that it had not received any reports of houses collapsing in this storm. The Cape Point and Frisco campgrounds and several off-road vehicle ramps remain closed, the Seashore said, and it currently has no plans to purchase threatened oceanfront structures in Rodanthe or Buxton.

This story reflects conditions as of Wednesday morning and will be updated.

The Inquisitor sent requests for comment to Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, the National Weather Service office in Newport/Morehead City, East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute and the North Carolina Department of Insurance on Wednesday afternoon, after this story was first published. Responses received are included above; this story will be updated with any others.

Update, Oct. 21, 2026: This story has been updated with information from Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Photo: Debris from the May 2024 collapse of a house on Ocean Drive in Rodanthe, N.C. Cape Hatteras National Seashore / National Park Service, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.