Seashells blanket Outer Banks beaches after massive waves caused by Hurricane Teddy

Watch your feet if you’re headed to the Outer Banks. The beaches are blanketed in crunchy, sharp-edged seashells due to a perfect combination of storm winds, massive waves and lunar tides.

Cape Lookout National Seashore posted a photo Friday showing the highly collectible shells clustered on its beach like gravel: all types, all colors and conditions.

“Did someone say they were looking for shells?” the park wrote. “This shell patch brought to you by Hurricane Teddy’s storm swells, the strong Northeast wind and the astronomical high tides brought on by the new moon.”

The post went up just 24 hours after the main Outer Banks highway, NC 12, was reopened to tourists. It had been closed much of the week due to flooding associated with the same storm, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

OuterBanks.com reports North Carolina’s barrier islands are among the best places on the East Coast for shell hunters, due to a unique combination of colliding currents, shifting sands and marine life trapped in the Gulf Stream. Those same currents have been known to create islands and wipe them away in a matter of months.

Among the most unusual shells found in the past few years were an out-of-place Pacific Ocean snail and a 6-inch-wide ancient clam shell weighing 2 pounds, according to the National Park Service.

Hurricane Teddy never made landfall in the U.S., but its tropical-storm force winds (39 to 73 mph) generated massive waves. A NOAA buoy 17 miles southeast off Cape Point recorded a 17.7 foot wave at 1:50 a.m. on Sept. 21, and it was one in a series of giant waves that collided with the coast for nearly three days. (By comparison, waves recorded Friday were in the 3-foot range.)

The storm’s impact was compounded by the seasonal arrival of “King Tides,” a term for exceptionally high tides created when the moon’s orbit is at its nearest to the earth, according to NOAA. The tides often cause flooding on the Outer Banks, which was the case this week.

This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 1:05 PM with the headline "Seashells blanket Outer Banks beaches after massive waves caused by Hurricane Teddy."