Fierce storms this winter have eroded beaches in Scarborough, South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. But visitors this summer should see a recovery.

SCARBOROUGH – High winds and water this winter scoured sand off Higgins Beach in Scarborough, exposing a stretch of peat on one section of the beach. The peat is all that’s left of a marsh that once covered the beach thousands of years ago, and is an exciting scientific sight for state marine geologist Pete Slovinsky.

“It’s the ancient analog to what you see if you go look at a marsh today,” he said.

However, the exposed peat also is a sign of how much fierce storms this winter have taken a toll on Higgins Beach and other coastal beaches in Scarborough, South Portland and Cape Elizabeth, according to Slovinsky and Steve Dickson, another marine geologist with the Maine Geological Survey.

Conditions vary from beach to beach, but in general, the beaches have lost as much as three feet of sand in some places and have more exposed rocks and ledge, the geologists say.

Still, the geologists say that previous beach batterings, such as of those of the 2007 Patriots Day storm, show that the beaches will recover this summer – although more complete restoration could take two years or so.

“We do expect that the natural recovery cycle of beaches, which brings sand to shore in the summer, will begin any time now once the winter storm season is over,” Dickson said. “But we will expect to have slightly narrower dry beaches for the recreation season during this summer.”

Slovinsky last week walked Higgins and two other popular beaches, Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth and Willard Beach in South Portland. He was checking to see how the beaches had fared after the winter, in which there were unusually high storm surges in fierce storms in February and March.

All the beaches experienced some erosion, but Higgins fared worst and Willard escaped with relatively little damage, Slovinsky said after his walk. Crescent was in between, he said.

If he were grading the damage at Higgins, he said, the beach would receive a D.

“Higgins Beach is not looking very good. In fact, it looks the worst I’ve seen it in 10 years. There’s more sand off it right now than there was after the Patriots Day storm (in 2007),” Slovinsky said. “The sand level is down at least three feet, maybe more.”

Steve Seabury, a Higgins Beach resident who is one of a group of volunteers that collects monthly data on the beach for the Maine Geological Survey, agrees this winter was a harsh one at the beach.

“It’s worse than we’ve seen it in a long time,” Seabury said.

He gave a walking tour of Higgins to a reporter last week, pointing out some of the changes.

While the amount of sand on the beach is less overall, some of it got pushed up high on the beach in places such as the base of some granite steps leading down to the beach from Bayview Avenue. Of the 15 steps, six steps and the bottom of the stair railing were buried in sand.

But just a short distance away, west of the steps, sand had been scraped away to make visible what Slovinsky described as an “extensive” stretch of ancient peat deposits. Peat is decayed, compressed vegetable matter.

Seabury during the walk pointed out a thick slab of peat, which was as dark brown as the seaweed covering it.

“That stuff has been covered a long time and doesn’t get exposed much,” Slovinsky said.

The deposits at Higgins Beach haven’t been dated, but based on the age of other peat deposits in Maine, he estimated they could be 2,500 to 3,500 years old.

Other signs of change on the beach this winter are heaps of seaweed, some as high as three feet or more, which Seabury said is also unusual.

Crescent Beach, a few miles from Higgins, “did not seem to fare as poorly as Higgins, but didn’t seem to fare well either,” Slovinsky said. He said he’d give that beach a C grade.

He found areas on the beach where rock outcroppings usually covered with sand are now exposed, and where the beach has become stony instead of sandy.

Also, he said, there has been erosion of the dunes ranging from about two feet to four or five feet.

There also is a lot of seaweed on the beach, he said. While beachgoers may not like seaweed, Slovinsky said, it provides good nutrition for dune grass to grow.

When it comes to Willard Beach, Slovinsky said he’d grade that beach a B+.

A portion of the beach lost some sand and has become more stony, and there was some erosion at the beach’s northeastern end, where the soft beach meets a rocky headland, he said.

However, Slovinsky said, much of the beach’s sand was preserved. “There’s a good amount of sand on the upper portion of the beach profile,” he said.

Also, he said, dune erosion was not severe. “Overall I think Willard Beach did pretty well,” Slovinsky said.

He said he’s not sure why Willard escaped this winter, because it lost about 40 feet of dunes in the Patriots Day storm.

Among other local beaches that took a hit this winter was Scarborough Beach, where, Dickson, said there was a loss of about two feet of sand, resulting in “dramatic beach lowering.”

He said that the “low tide line has probably shifted in about 100 feet making the whole beach a little bit more narrow and a little bit steeper during all stages of the tide.”

However, Dickson and Slovinsky said that sand pulled off the various beaches during the winter has become sandbars located off shore.

In the summer season, when the storms typically are not as severe, that sand gets returned to the beaches, the geologists said.

“The big waves are gone and the small waves push it back up on the beach,” Dickson said.

And while changes on beaches can be dramatic from year to year, permanent change happens more slowly, he said. Generally, beaches in Maine are moving landward at the rate of about 1 foot per year.

Seabury, whose family has lived at Higgins Beach for several generations, has watched that slow but inexorable march for decades. He uses two pictures of the Breakers Inn on Bayview Avenue at the beach to show what is happening.

In one photograph, taken about 1940, the beach is higher and the dunes are right in front of the hotel. Also, a lifeboat that always sat in front of the hotel usually sat on dry sand, out of reach of even a high tide, Seabury said.

That image contrasts with a 2009 photo of the inn. The beach today is lower, the dunes are gone and there now is a high stone seawall protecting the inn from the water.

Seabury said that while the lifeboat – which would have been located in front of where the stone wall is today — used to sit high and dry, now “there’s not a single (high) tide that doesn’t reach that stone wall.”

Steve Seabury, a longtime resident of Higgins Beach in Scarborough, shows where fierce winter storms have damaged a seawall built to protect a house on the beach. Seabury said erosion at the beach this winter has been severe, but he and state geologists expect the beach to make some recovery this summer. (Staff photo by Brandon McKenney)Large mounds of seaweed are strewn on Higgins Beach after severe storms in February and March caused unusually high surges. (Staff photo by Brandon McKenney)