Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #110: Blizzard of 2026, Power Outages, Odd Captions, etc.

1. The Blizzard of 2026 came roaring in late Sunday night. By sunrise on Monday morning, we had power flash off several times, but luckily, it always came right back on. The funny thing was that I sleep with a white noise machine on, as I am a very light sleeper. Each time the power went off, the machine stopped, and I immediately woke up. The machine has several different sounds to sleep to. The default is running water. So when the power came back on, I was greeted with running water sounds. I would switch it back to the white noise only for the power to go back out a few minutes later. After doing this two or three times, I gave up and left the running water noise on. The white noise machine became my canary in the coal mine during the day. Since I didn’t need any lights on, I knew if that machine stopped, we had lost power.


2. Fittingly, during the day of the blizzard, I got nostalgic and watched a video I had shot with my camcorder of a blizzard we had on Cape Cod in 1996. That one was in the first week of January during my senior year of high school. We had 21” of snow from that. It was wild to see my siblings and me out shoveling during the peak of the storm near 11pm. We also scaled our roof with a ladder. Mind you, I was the oldest at 18, the rest were younger. It was a different time 30 years ago. While watching my brother and me driving around town during the storm in my mother’s blue station wagon, I noticed a few things. First, I was way more reckless with driving, doing fish tails, donuts, and getting stuck in snow banks. Second and perhaps more shocking was how much of an accent I had back then. Not sure if it was a conscious effort to speak without the Cape Cod accent once I started doing author events, or if it’s just something you can lose over time. It’s amazing how fast 30 years can go and not really feel like all that long.


3. One of the silver linings about the blizzard was that I could use shoveling the snow as a workout. I set my Fitbit up and got to shoveling during the height of the storm, around 12:30pm on Monday. It was hard-packed, cement snow, probably over a foot by that time. Despite it being heavy, it was not terrible to shovel since each scoop stayed on the shovel. I shoveled for about 70 minutes and clocked in roughly 715 calories burned. I felt really good about that and was looking forward to a hot shower and a bit of rest while the storm raged on. That was not to be though, as once finished shoveling, I found out that the power had gone out while I was outside. No shower, no hot food, just sitting in silence, slowly draining my phone’s battery. I guess I was foolish to think that power would stay on during one of the biggest storms in recent memory.



4. In total, it was close to 75% of Cape Cod that lost power during the blizzard. I believe at one point, the entire Outer Cape (Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown) was without power. I always say that at my age, I am old enough to remember growing up without the technology of the internet and smartphones. It was not some sort of a challenge, but we ended up there anyway. Unsure of how long power would be out, I tried to prolong the life of my devices as long as possible. I had a portable battery called PoweRocks that my mother had given me years ago. Smartly, I charged it before the storm. I used that to prop up my phone’s battery. Once it died, I plugged it into my laptop and drained that battery to slowly recharge the PoweRocks and my phone. When all else failed, I’d go sit in my running car with my phone plugged in. Surprisingly, that didn’t give me as much of a charge as I’d hoped. It was a game of musical chairs with my car, phone, laptop, and portable charger as I tried to keep some sort of connection to the outside world while the blizzard raged and then crews worked to restore power.


5. While out getting the lay of the land the morning after the blizzard, I had a fun adventure with my youngest niece, Sylvie, who lives nearby. I was out filming a video where I stood in a fresh snow drift to show people how deep the snow was when she spotted me. She was able to convince me to go for a walk with her mother and their dog through their neighborhood. It doesn’t take much convincing, though. My mother typically says Sylvie is my boss and can get me to do pretty much anything. The neighborhood we walked in wasn’t plowed at all, which made walking a chore. It was a fun time though, as Sylvie enjoyed diving into the snow and asking me to come and rescue her from it. Eventually, I offered to give her a piggyback ride back to her house. By this point, I had helped do a 2nd shoveling of the driveway on an empty stomach, plus done the walk, so I was tired. If I could have gone back to bed at 8:30am, I would have. Sylvie wanted me to hang out at her house, but I wanted to go home and collapse into a chair. She’s very convincing, but I had to say no. It’s hard because she’s smart and remembers everything. If I said I’d be back later, she’d hold me to it. I had to actually go home and relax, otherwise she’d call me out on it.



6. In total, we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 18-20” of snow on the Mid-Cape. The jackpot was a stretch from Plymouth, MA, down into southwestern Rhode Island. There, they got something like 3 feet of snow. The Blizzard of 2026 was breaking records set by the legendary Blizzard of ‘78. We had wind gusts of 80mph on Nantucket. I think Cape Cod got spared in terms of major beach erosion since the storm’s peak was during low tides. That being said, the videos of the Scituate shore were awful as they typically are during big storms. I have seen countless such videos of huge waves crashing into the sea walls and spraying into the air as high as the roofs of 3-story houses. I love Scituate, but it has to be a blessing and a curse for those who live there. You get beautiful scenery and shorelines, but also the threat of major beach erosion and storm surge damage. As of writing this entry, I believe that more than half of Cape Cod is still without power. It came back on where I live in the middle of the night after about 40 hours of darkness and cold. As I mentioned above, my white noise machine was my canary in the coal mine. I heard it turn on and checked the time. I hope that everyone else gets their power back soon. It’s no fun sleeping in a 55-degree room.


7. Once fully shoveled out, and once I felt the roads were passable enough, I took a little ride. I needed to try to charge my phone, so I figured rather than sitting in the driveway in my car, I’d go see how the area looked. It was an adventure for sure. The roads ranged from passable to totally unplowed. I drive a sedan, so my adventurous side is determined by whether my car can make it. I was more than willing to walk through deep snow to get cool photos and videos. The problem was finding a place where I could park. There was also the issue of downed trees and power lines. There were a few detours caused by trees across the road. I didn’t dare try to get any footage while driving, otherwise I’d end up in one of those ‘idiot driver’ fail videos. In the end, I went and grabbed some food at a supermarket that was open and called it a day. With no power for several days at my work, it left a lot of room for further adventures later in the week.


8. The difference in when certain areas of Cape Cod got their power back meant that, despite getting power back at 4am Wednesday morning, a lot of other places did not have it back. One such place was my work. I ended up with an entire week off from work. It wasn’t planned, and I couldn’t really enjoy it since half of it was under storm conditions. With half of the Cape not having power, all I could really do was sit around and relax, which is not my favorite activity. It’s amazing the luck of the draw where a select few never lost power during the blizzard, others (like me) got it back in a day and a half, while more had to wait 4 or 5 days. There was really no rhyme or reason, but it made me feel like I needed to apologize to those who had longer durations without power, like I had somehow paid off the power gods to give ours back sooner. You’d see a handful of people on social media saying it ‘must be nice’ to have power when, in reality, it was totally random.


9. After a long and cold winter, it’s amazing how good 45 degrees feels. I immediately grabbed my fall jacket to head out into the sun. As bad as the blizzard was early in the week, having several days of temperatures in the 40s did wonders for melting the snow. It also did wonders for the psyche of a lot of us in New England. It honestly has felt at times like winter was never going to end, but now hopefully (knocks wood) the worst is behind us. Those who live in warmer climates wouldn’t understand when we get a 40+ degree day and drive with our windows down and start drinking iced coffee. Yes, we’re kind of crazy, but in a charming way.


10. With my content being more visible on Instagram and TikTok in the last month or so, I am starting to try to put a little more effort into my videos. This means taking a few b-roll shots, doing camera cuts, and trying to turn a 90-second to 2-minute video into a short film. Sure, it might not make much of a difference in the long run, but it actually is fun and gets me some practice in a director’s sense and a layout sense. This video of the damage at Town Neck Beach in Sandwich is an example of what I’m talking about.



11. As I have said many times, when it comes to photography, I practice something called dedication to the craft. That is the idea of getting the photo you want, even if it means disregarding your own safety. Obviously, my risks are calculated, but they are still risks for a good shot. The older I get, the more my practical side starts to take over. I have always seen a few moves ahead in life, and now I have found that seeing those moves can stop me from doing something stupid. For example, and obviously you knew there was an example, this week I went shooting down in Chatham. While at one location, I noticed in the distance on a deserted stretch of beach, there was a grounded boat. I immediately knew I needed to get closer to it. I went to a place called the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. It’s way out in the boonies of Chatham. From there, I could see the boat and knew a route I could take to get pretty close to it. Sadly, the last few years have seen this location decimated by erosion to the point where there is no beach access from it anymore. Well, technically. Here is the seeing moves ahead part. There is an overlook where you can see the ocean, but the stairs that used to lead you to the beach have been removed. If you walk to the edge of the bluffs, it’s probably a 10-15-foot drop down to the beach below. A few years ago, I’d have jumped off the bluffs, walked the beach, and gotten some sick photos and videos of the boat. Today though, the idea of jumping in the snow and sand and then trying to figure out my way back to the parking lot, all while hoping nobody who lived on the bluffs saw me and decided to make a scene, was all too much. If it hadn’t been winter, I’d have walked to an access trail a half-mile away, but the temperature and time of day wouldn’t allow it. I had to settle for a video from a distance, lame.


12. I like putting captions with all of my videos on social media. It helps people who might not be in a place where they can play a video with sound. As you’d expect with AI deciphering my words, there are lots of inaccuracies, specifically with proper names and locations. This week, I shot a video at the Cape Cod Canal. While I was there, a helicopter flew overhead, and I got a fun shot of it. When I went to add captions to the video, I noticed odd words appearing. While uploading it to TikTok, I noticed a few Arabic words in my captions. Then, when I put the same video up on Instagram, I noticed the phrase ‘oh my god’ was randomly thrown in. It took me a moment to realize that the AI was trying to make words out of the helicopter sounds. So apparently TikTok thinks helicopter noises sound like Arabic, and IG thinks they sound like someone crying out, ‘oh my god.’ Both random and funny at the same time. I did momentarily debate leaving those captions in, but ultimately took them out.


13. I got lucky and experienced a classic Cape Cod sunset on the tidal flats this weekend. All of the ice had melted away, and it looked like it does in the summer. I had a great idea. I would shoot a killer time-lapse video of both the tide rolling in and the sun setting. I used my selfie stick, which is also a tripod, and set my phone up probably 6-7 feet away from the water’s edge and let it roll. I had hoped that the water wouldn’t come in too far before the sun had dipped below the horizon. I watched the video recording, and the water rolled in. It started lapping at the tripod, but I held firm. It began trickling past the tripod, but I wouldn’t relent. I held out as long as I could, but once the water was 5 feet past the tripod holding my phone, I had to rescue it. If I had waited a few moments later, I don’t know if the water eventually would have knocked my phone over. The video was amazing, though. Probably 5 minutes of filming for less than 30 seconds of time-lapse.

Cape Cod Nauset Beach Winter Storm Riley Livestream 2018 - Found Footage After 8 Years!

March 4, 2018, Winter Storm Riley tore through Cape Cod with winds gusting over 90 mph. Even worse was the storm surge and erosion. I went live on Facebook on location at Nauset Beach in Orleans during the storm's peak. My phone's battery died during the stream, and I could not find the footage on Facebook. Since I never officially 'ended' the stream, I figured it was not saved and, therefore, lost. I looked many times over the years with no luck. Then this week by happenstance I was looking for a different post when lo and behold I found the raw footage in my archives. What we have here is that livestream footage of Winter Storm Riley at its peak forever changing one of Cape Cod's most iconic locations. I did my best to remaster the video, fix the audio due to the intense winds, and even add captions where I could to make the viewing experience as good as it could be. To listen to episodes of the In My Footsteps Podcast click here: https://inmyfootstepspodcast.buzzsprout.com/ Become A Subscriber to the Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/InMyFootstepsPodcast

Henry Beston's Outermost House - In My Footsteps Podcast: Episode 13

In My Footsteps Podcast: Episode 2 - Cape Cod's Atlantis Billingsgate Island

In Their Footsteps: Cape Cod History - Billingsgate Island

     Time gives and time takes away. Throughout history people, places, and things arrive and disappear, some lost to history. This is no different on Cape Cod. When driving along the main streets and back roads longtime residents often remark of what used to be where and who used to live there. Losing a building is common, but an entire community? That is something far more rare. It happened 150 years ago in Provincetown at Long Point when the majority of the settlement was floated across the harbor to make up some of the homes along Commercial and Bradford Streets. However Long Point itself still exists. Another community was lost to time about a century ago. This was different. This was nature reclaiming the land it stood on. Shoreline change and erosion is nothing new. This is the story of Cape Cod’s ‘Atlantis.’ This is the story of Billingsgate Island.

     Today Billingsgate is a shoal, and a footnote in Cape Cod history. For many decades though it was a bustling community. Located approximately three miles west of Eastham's Sunken Meadow Beach, just south of Jeremy Point, sat Billingsgate Island. At its peak size the island encompassed roughly 60 acres of land. For comparison the small island of Muskeget, just off of Nantucket, is roughly 292 acres in size and just over a mile across at its widest. Noted by the Pilgrims on their journey from Provincetown to Plymouth its first known European inhabitants were Mayflower passenger Constance Hopkins and her husband Nicholas Snow in the 1640’s.

     During the first quarter of the 18^th century Billingsgate, along with neighboring Great Island, were made the headquarters of the fishing and whaling industry in the area. In 1721 Billingsgate was designated a parish and officially the North Precinct of Eastham. At the time there were many complaints by the people of mainland Eastham about fishermen and whalers sneaking to the town commons and cutting down trees to be used on the island. Billingsgate became part of the new town of Wellfleet when it separated itself from Eastham in May 1763.

     The peak of Billingsgate was the mid-19^th century. It was a prosperous fishing village which would be inhabited during the warmer months by as many as 80 people. The population of the island began to grow in 1821 when a salt works was constructed and in 1822 when the Federal government bought four acres of land for $100 ($2,200 in 2020) upon which a lighthouse was built. The first keeper was William Moore and he would remain on the island year-round, sometimes alone for months at a time in winter. In the decades following the construction of the lighthouse the island would grow to include thirty homes, a schoolhouse, a store, oil works, and a baseball team which would row across the bay to play other teams from the Outer Cape. It was a paradise out of a storybook.

     However, not too long after the lighthouse was built it became apparent that something was happening to the island. The same erosion which batters the coastline today was slowly chipping away at Billingsgate. As early as 1850, in a report by then-lighthouse keeper Francis Krogman, it was noted that the island was ‘washing away very fast.’ An 1854 storm damaged the lighthouse so badly that $14,000 ($426,000 in 2020) was appropriated for the construction of a new one, located further to the north on higher ground, which was completed in September 1858.

1871 Map of Cape Cod with Billingsgate Island circled
(National Public Domain Archives)

     In 1863 it was noted that at high tide the island stood only 13-feet above sea level. With one eye on the booming fishing and whaling industries and the other on the creeping erosion the community would continue to thrive into the latter half of the 19^th century. The eroding shores created dangerous shoals around Billingsgate, leading to several ships running aground. This included the schooner S & E Corson from Philadelphia which sunk in April 1879 with its cargo of coal. In 1888, with erosion threatening the lighthouse, a 1,000-foot sea wall and bulkhead was constructed to try to buy some time. It ended up doing the opposite and speeding up the erosion.

     Slowly but surely the fishermen and their families left Billingsgate. The homes would be taken down and floated across the bay to be resurrected in the towns along the Outer Cape. The twenty-by-twenty-foot schoolhouse would be taken down around the turn of the 20^th century when only about six families remained on the island. Despite the mass exodus some still saw Billingsgate as an attractive destination. This included Dr. Maurice Richardson of Boston who paid a total of $785 ($24,400 in 2020) for two lots on the island and built a summer home there in 1897.

Billingsgate Lighthouse circa 1897
(Lighthouse Friends.com)

     The 20^th century saw the demise of Billingsgate Island. A 600-foot breakwater built in 1905 failed to stem the tide. The homes which had dotted the land had been moved, only oyster shacks and hunting camps remained. The lighthouse would crumble in a storm on the day after Christmas in 1915 and be replaced by a skeleton light fixture on a tripod. Around this same time, after his death, the summer home of Dr. Richardson was taken down. The last keeper of the light, Henry Daniels, would spend three nearly-uninterrupted years on the disappearing land mass at the same time guarding the valuable oyster beds from 1917-1920. The island remained a haven for shellfishing, but these were mostly day-trips from the mainland as it shrunk to a mere 5 acres by the 1920’s.

     The natural process of erosion never ceases and in December 1932 the skeleton lighthouse had fallen due to the high tides. It was replaced by a lighted bell buoy. The breakwater was dismantled in 1935 to be used for repair work at Wellfleet Harbor. In 1942 the tides would submerge the entire island for the first time, officially ending Billingsgate Island and creating Billingsgate Shoal. In the years after its loss fishermen asked for a new lighthouse to be built at the tip of Jeremy Point to aide in navigation, however that never occurred.

Present-day coordinated of where Billingsgate Lighthouse stood circa 1853
(Google Maps)

     Today Cape Cod’s ‘Atlantis’ still lives on in photographs, the homes which are dotted around Wellfleet and surrounding areas, artifacts, and writings about the island including from Henry David Thoreau in his Cape Cod book. The shoal is frequently visible at low tide making it a popular picnicking spot. If one is lucky they may even stumble upon a brick from the old lighthouse’s foundation. It is impossible to step foot on the sandy shoal of what was once a thriving community and not take a moment to think about the power of the sea. It is impossible not to think of all that once stood there and remember to enjoy each and every day because at some point it could all be but a memory, much like Billingsgate Island.