Hurricane Milton was hundreds of miles away from Cayman on Wednesday, tracking across the eastern Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, but it was still influencing weather conditions in the Cayman Islands.
Large waves were crashing ashore on the west side of Grand Cayman, undermining part of the property and wall at Coral Beach on Seven Mile Beach, and bringing salt spray and water onto the road along Seafarers Way in George Town.
The waves and debris forced the closure of Seafarers Way between Warwick Drive and Fort Street to motorists on Wednesday evening. Police advised that conditions along the roadway were “extremely unsafe”.
Buildings that previously had lost parts of the beach sand in front of their properties along the southern section of Seven Mile Beach appeared to be taking the brunt of the waves, with Royal Palms and some condominiums along that stretch taking direct hits to concrete structures from the incoming waves.
At nearby Laguna Del Mar, steel shutters had been installed on the lower floor units to prevent water from entering the patios of the sea-facing units.
Despite the Cayman Islands National Weather Service’s Tuesday forecast indicating seas would be smooth to slight that day, water sports operators were taking no chances.
“Everyone moved their boats out of the anchorage off Lobster Pot on Tuesday morning,” said Ash McKnight of Go Pro Diving.
It appears they were sensible to do so, because by 10pm Tuesday, the waves were already starting to build off the west coast.
In response to questions, the National Weather Service showed that it had indeed issued a forecast from Monday, 7 Oct., indicating that the seas would be building and getting rougher from Tuesday, and its forecast had included a small craft advisory for Wednesday.
Chief Forecaster Kerry Powery said he suspected there had been a “glitch in the (CINWS) website in updating the afternoon and evening particulars of the forecast,” which caused it to show “smooth to slight seas” for Tuesday.
Meanwhile, cruise ships scheduled to visit the George Town port on Tuesday cancelled their visits.
The port’s chief safety and crisis manager, Julius Jacky said, “The port stayed open, but we used the day to clean up and move everything up as far inland as possible, and away from the expected waves.”
He added that they were right to do so, because there was some flooding on the dock, with the waves breaching the pier, especially on the south terminal.
Milton is expected to make landfall in Florida as an “extremely dangerous major hurricane” late Wednesday night, according to the US National Hurricane Center. It is expected to hit Florida as a Category 3 hurricane between 10pm and midnight, local time.
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Folks, these are not BIG storms. We’ve had Norwesters in my time that brought more wave-action to SMB than the last 3 passing hurricanes. The scapegoat “seawalls” are all old. They were all there 20 years ago. I mean, if we build a seawall along west bay road today and the ocean slowly creeps up to it, is the seawall really the problem? Something is clearly different in that either there is more water in the ocean causing more erosion, or there is less sand being chucked back onto our beach because of rising water temperatures and a change in the ecosystem that nourished our beaches for the last few hundred years. Whatever the cause, it’s bigger than Cayman. We can’t get China and India to stop emitting CO2 and raising global water temperatures. We can’t stop glaciers from melting. What we can do is make a practical decision. Do we protect the development along our western facing beaches or do we let the buildings fall into the sea and move back from it. That’s sort of the decision. Wringing your hands about seawalls and imported sand is just an allegory for moving back further and further until there is nowhere to go back to. If the environmentalists in this Country want to diddle and watch this part of SMB melt into the sea to prove they were right and that none of us should be here in the first place, then that’s all fine, but who is going to convince the next investors to build beautiful infrastructure to invest here and to support the Caymanians of the future. This is one of those times we need courage and leadership from our Government. We need to put our big boy pants on and let people self repair. In a Country of 80,000 people less than a mile across there is no “Managed retreat” from the beach. There is only “build a seawall” or “move to another island”.