Flooding risks increase for beach communities as super moon set to appear in night sky

CAPE FEAR (WWAY) — Some beach communities recovering and rebuilding from Potential Tropical Cyclone 8 (PTC 8) may have some flooding issues later this week because of something high in the sky.

This Thursday, a super full moon will be in the night sky.

A supermoon is when the moon is at its closest position to the Earth and will appear slightly larger and brighter in the sky.

Supermoons occur around 4 times per year.

Marty Shirah is a manager for the Ingram Planetarium.

He said a supermoon will have a stronger effect on the tides, leading to flooding in some areas.

“Normally the super moon affects the high tide quite a bit,” Shirah said. “Even around here, Ocean Isle, Sunset Beach, some of the island actually floods. The streets of the islands actually has some water in that so when you have the super full moon. So it does affect with the gravitational pull, it does affect the flooding.”

These higher-than-usual tides are known as king tides and one town that expects frequent flooding from them is Carolina Beach, especially along Canal Drive.

Town manager Bruce Oakley said the town is looking for ways to better handle flooding along Canal.

“We’ve done engineering studies and we know that one of the biggest things we can do is bulkheads,” Oakley said. “And the town is actually got plans to build two more bulkheads on property we own. We are encouraging others that own some of the properties along Canal that don’t have it, trying to work with the property owners to hopefully get them to get bulkheads on those properties and once we do, we think that will alleviate a lot of these sunny-day floodings.”

Oakley said one bulkhead was damaged and partially collapsed during PTC 8 and will need to be repaired.

October will be the third of four straight months to have a supermoon in 2024.