Flood subgroup to hold townwide meeting

Topics to include mitigation design and funding

Originally published to the Ocean Star on January 30, 2026

BAY HEAD — The flood subgroup of the Bay Head Environmental Commission will be holding its annual flood mitigation meeting from 10 a.m. until noon on Saturday, Feb. 21, to inform the public about what it has accomplished so far and what the group plans to do in 2026 regarding flood mitigation. The meeting will be held at the Bay Head Fire Hall at 81 Bridge Ave.

“We cover a lot of ground at that meeting, from top to bottom,” Commission Chairman Rick McGoey said. The topics to be covered at the meeting are flood projection, flood mitigation design status and flood mitigation funding. At the meeting, residents and other concerned citizens will get a chance to see how the commission members predict the upcoming flood levels and how they plan to mitigate the effects of flooding.

QUARTERLY FLOODING UPDATE

A quarterly report published by the flood subgroup said that 2025 saw a 50% decrease in flood days compared to 2024, but it still ranked as the fifth highest year for flooding in the past two decades.

McGoey explained that the report specifically covers 20 years of time because of the 19-year-long “Metonic cycle,” after which the moon returns to the beginning of its lunar cycle. Simply put, in order to get a scientifically accurate average of tidal levels, measurements must be considered over the course of a whole lunar cycle, due to the relationship between the moon and the tides.

The report considered flood days from 2006 to 2025, and broke them down into two groups, nuisance and major. A nuisance flood is one where the water level rises 1.4 feet above the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88), which is a standard fixed point that is used to measure tide levels. A major flood occurs when the water level rises 2.4 feet above NAVD88. There is also a more intense type of flood called “catastrophic,” which Bay Head hasn’t seen since Superstorm Sandy. According to the report, in 2025, Bay Head saw 56 flood days, 53 nuisance and 3 major, totaling 294 hours of flooding.

In addition, 2025 was a period of extreme polarity regarding water levels, including both extremely high levels and record-breaking low levels. The report includes a “Highest/Lowest single day level” chart that ranks the individual days of highest and lowest flood levels in the last twenty years. 2025 was one of just two years that appeared on both lists, holding the record for lowest and second-lowest days of the period. The highest day in 2025 was Oct. 30, at 3 feet over NAVD88, (which tied with Oct. 30, 2021, for eighth highest day overall) and the lowest day in 2025 was Feb. 18, at 2.28 feet below NAVD88, the lowest day in the entire twenty-year period, breaking the previous record of 2.14 feet below NAVD88 on Jan. 6, 2018.

The highest tide level of the whole period was 6.9 feet above NAVD88, and occurred on Oct. 30, 2012.