This is the kind of storm, not infrequent between September and May, that flings down ladders reaching to the beach, undermines or tears away the asphalt parking lots, throws wharf pilings and great ocean-drifting timbers around as if they were matchsticks, and leaves them strewn on the sands. It also tears away tremendous amounts of material from the cliffs, as well as straightening or leveling out the contours of the beach. The cliffs are eroded by storm action primarily, not by the tides; but after a series of storms uncovers a part of the beach, displacing great volumes of sand, sections of the cliff may come down by gravity slippage, because they are not supported underneath, and high tides may help the process. The extent of cliff erosion is very variable, and in so far as storms are concerned, depends on their degree of intensity. Offshore bars and shoals protect the beach from the action of the sea to some extent. When they are breached during storms, the result is a greatly increased cutting away of the beach sands and erosion of the cliffs. When bars reform and build up again the beach slowly recovers its former volume, though what the cliffs lose, of course, they cannot regain. The estimate given for the average rate of cliff erosion along the Outer Cape is from two to four feet a year. I have heard of one family who have had to move their cottage back three times during the past forty years, a period in which the cliff, so it was estimated, may have receded nearly 200 feet in that area; and their house lot was not extensive enough for any more moves. Most residents or returned visitors can remember some change in the topography of the cliffs over the years. Not long after the end of World War II, when I came to live on Cape Cod, there were still the remnants of the old twin lighthouses above Nauset Light Beach, in the form of a curved brick base at the top of the cliff. As time went by it was undermined, then started to slide down, reached the base of the cliff to be completely buried by sand, but was uncovered again some years afterward. In South Wellfleet water pipes still project over the cliff, indicating the presence of summer cottages some forty or fifty years ago. Changes in the beach are more immediate, and not likely to be so irretrievable, but even there it is possible to see its fluctuations over the years. There is a great rock off Nauset Light Beach that used to stand high and clear at low tide some years ago, but it has been undercut and filled around with sand and recently only its top was showing.