Tropical Storm Irene vs. Hurricane Gloria a Photo Comparison! Milford, CT
Now that Tropical Storm Irene has passed and the destruction caused, lets look back at similar storms. The last storm to impact southwestern Connecticut the way Irene did last week was Hurricane Gloria in September of 1985. Gloria made landfall in Long Island and then again in south western Connecticut as a strong category one hurricane. By the time Irene was passing the same area of Connecticut in late August of 2011 it was downgraded to a tropical storm. However due to particular circumstances in both storms, the results were very similar as you can see in the following photos.
Although Irene was not as strong as Gloria, the storm surge almost matched the Hurricane from the '80's. The following photos are comparisons of similar areas from the storm surge in Irene and Gloria. Although i wasn't born in time to experience Hurricane Gloria, i was lucky enough to get these photographs from my father who was a police officer on patrol during the storm. Although some of the photos from Irene may look more impressive, it is due to the timing of the photograph. Many of the Gloria photographs were taken after the storm, mean while the photos i took from Irene were taken during It's peak as storm passed at high tide. It's unbelievable how similar some of the shots are, even with almost 26 years apart!
The first photo above is storm surged flooded Melba street. The top half being from Irene and the bottom half being a photo from Gloria. Although the street has changed slightly, notice the yellow garage on the bottom left in the Gloria picture and the same garage in the bottom left of the Irene photo. The picture to the right is of Anchor Beach, In both photos the surge is high and the buildings haven't changed much over the years. Below is a photograph of the Bayview Ave area. looking towards Melba street. In both storms the surge made it over the wide beach into the street. Beneath that photo is another photo looking south on Bayview ave. Although the top photo (from Gloria) the surge is already receding, the bottom photo (Irene) is near it's highest point. Notice the homes at the end of the street to the left, all three of them are still there today. The next set of photos may not be the same street but what caught my eye is the same sort of debris. In the top photo is a garbage can floating in the flooded street near the beach, below that Milford's new recycling bin is floating in the street in a similar setting. The next photo is two photos of the waves from the storms. The top one is waves after Gloria passed, the one on the bottom is waves at Woodmont Beach during Irene. Below the wave photos is a set of photos from Point Beach, both flooded the top one being from Irene and the bottom one being from Gloria. The last two sets of photos are just similar shots i found from Gloria and Irene of flooded roads and trees on power lines.
Although i grew up looking at the photographs of Hurricane Gloria that my dad took and taking the photographs of Hurricane Irene, i was still surprised to see the similarities. Although 26 years has passed and the photos are from two different storms there seems to be similar damage.
