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It was a dark and stormy night when the wild weather arrived in Maine. And then, three days later, there was another storm. A bigger storm. And, as if the combination of two major winter storms within a few days weren’t bad enough, it was also a New Moon – meaning astronomically high tides. So, you get the idea. Lots more tide, up to three feet higher. And over six inches of rain. Not a good combination. It rained and rained. And rained. And the wind blew. And it blew hard. Some reports were gusts of 95mph throughout the state.
When the storms were over and power restored, we ventured out to assess the damage. Damage to our homes, our land, our towns. Properties on the ocean’s edge were dealt a massive blow. And that means our lighthouses. Most of the lighthouses are cared for by small nonprofits. Ford Reiche, who owns and restored the Halfway Rock Lighthouse, saw the destruction of years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. “If you’re some organization doing the best you can to hold something together, you’re not dealing with that type of catastrophic harm,” Ford Reiche said. “You’re dealing with a coat of paint every five years. And if you did have big repairs, you phased them out over a long period of time. When a storm sweeps through like that it’s a financial shock.”
What follows are photos of some of the damage that we know of at press time. We’ve also included a few “before” photos for additional perspective. There are still a couple dozen lighthouses that we simply do not have reports on yet.
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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