Thirty-three years ago, this beach disappeared. Now, thanks to the power of Mother Nature, it’s been restored to its former glory.
Thirty-three years ago, the ocean pulled an entire beach worth of sand back into the sea. Now, because of a freakishly high tide and strong winds, it’s back… and it returned basically overnight.
In the winter of 1984, the beach at Dooagh on County Mayo’s Achill Island was slammed by a few massive storms. Coupled with high tides, the storms dragged, as Sean Molloy, an Achill Tourism representative, told CNN, “every last grain of sand off the beach.”
Soon after, the local economy all but collapsed. Restaurants and hotels that were dependent on tourists attracted to the area were forced to close their doors, and the entire town changed. Achill Island isn’t a crowded place–with a population of around 3,000 people, it’s a quiet, rugged place, made all the more rugged when the sand disappeared, leaving only bare rock in its place.
During the winter of 1985/85, all the sand was pulled from the beach, leaving only bare rock in its place. Photo: Achill Tourism
After about ten days of oddly strong north winds and strange tides in April, though, Dooagh Beach has been completely transformed back to its former glory. Thousands of tons of sand were deposited onto the bare rock, creating a pristine 1,000-foot beach. “Apparently what that does is, it blows the surface water back, because this is a south-facing beach. The sea then takes the sands underneath and brings the sands up,” Molloy explained. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
Locals are ecstatic at the return of their lost beach. “A lot of people come to Achill to look at the power of nature because you see the cliffs and the boglands and the beaches and mountains,” Molloy continued. “This is just one very vivid example of the power of nature.”
