Criminal Defense Attorney in Skidaway Island, GA.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Some people out on Tybee Island are making their way to the stores and getting their homes ready for what Hurricane Ian could bring to the area such as high winds and heavy rain.

People out on Tybee Island say their focus right now is securing their property. For some, they’ve been through hurricanes before and know the drill but they do say every storm is different, so there’s no such thing as being overprepared.

“Even if the hurricane passes us over and doesn’t do any damage, I’m ready for the next one,” Tybee Island Resident Kecia Adams said.

Better safe than sorry. This is what many residents out on Tybee Island say is their motto as they prepare for what impact Hurricane Ian could have on the coastal communities.

“I’m looking at my weather every 15 minutes. Is there an update? Is there an update?” Tybee Island Resident Deb Baber said.

Kecia Adams and Deb Baber both say the next three days are dedicated to prepping their homes and yards.

“Take down our chimes and move them inside. We either bring the outside furniture in or either turn it down and we bungee cord things, so that they’re not moving around. We bungee stuff in the garage to the garage like trash cans the bikes,” Baber said.

“We’re weather stripping and putting plastic over the doors inside and out. It can’t hurt. So, I’m doing it and putting boards over that,” Adams said.

Adams says even though there isn’t an evacuation order in place, as of now, her and her husband will be staying with family more inland and coming back to Tybee when it passes. She says she does expect to come home to some flood damage.

“My house is on the ground, so subject to flooding. It’s going to happen,” Adams says.

Baber has a raised home, which she says has been very helpful in previous storms. She says she will be moving her cars, though, to higher ground since her street is prone to flooding.

“Plan for the worst,” Baber says.

She says she also encourages others on the Island to make sure their generators are ready, batteries are charged, trash cans are tied up and that they have enough food and drinks in the pantry.

“We’re like ‘oh no, we don’t want to get ready again,’ but you know some people get ready at the very beginning of hurricane season and they don’t get unready until it’s over. Get ready, get ready now. Then you’ll be sure that you’re ok,” Baber says.

Tybee city officials say they have sand for people on the island if they need.

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There’s no question about it. Tybee Island is one of the most mesmerizing beaches on Georgia’s 110-mile shoreline. We also know that Jekyll Island, once the playground of such filthy-rich notables as Rockefeller and Vanderbilt—is a dream destination for island hoppers who appreciate something about the charm and allure of beautiful, secluded hideaways.

Because of their famed beauty, both Tybee and Jekyll Island are frequent mentions in travel circles. The ideal would be to visit both of these two sides of paradise. However, the truth is that visiting both destinations is oftentimes not practical. Many of us just don’t have the time for a combined trip. And some cannot meet the cost of what would otherwise be a tour of a lifetime. For those who have to choose one—this article lifts the lid on which of the two is a better travel destination.

Why You Might Prefer Tybee Island To Jekyll Island

For those travelers looking for a destination that has more activities, Tybee Island edges out Jekyll Island. The Tybee Island Marine Science Center alone packs a punch. At the center, travelers learn about the lives of different aquatic animals. A captivating lesson on starfish, snails, or sea turtles, while holding one or two slimy ones in hand—will be both interesting and intriguing. While there are no golf courses on Tybee Island, its closeness to Savannah does the trick. And, of course, there's the lighthouse that holds within its somber walls a lot of fascinating United States history. At the pier, visitors get the opportunity to watch dolphins, fish, or just chill out with friends.

On the food and dining scene—as well as entertainment—Tybee Island is just a little more active, vibrant, and diverse. The Original Crab Shack, perhaps Tybee’s most iconic eatery—serves incomparable deliciousness on a plate. No restaurant on Jekyll Island comes close. Then Tybee Island also has more grocery stores. These grocery stores are also better stocked than their Tybee Island counterparts. And it’s not just the number. Grocery prices on Tybee Island are also modest. On the flip side, Jekyll is not also all gloom. For starters, Jekyll’s historic district can enthuse history buffs. For the fun of teeing on lush courses, Jekyll Island has three 18-hole golf courses. Jekyll also boasts of having the Sea Turtle Research Center, something that’s comparable to Tybee’s Marine Science Center. Even if Tybee has more activities that one can do and is a tad more active, we would say the difference is not very pronounced.

However, there are certain vacation features for which there are no clear winners. For instance, in family-friendliness, we would say the two destinations share the spoils. There’s nothing off the charts at both locations. The same goes for camping. Both Tybee and Jekyll have hookups, clean showers, and generally fine camp-related amenities.

Related: Savannah To Tybee Island: Why This Is The Perfect Georgia Day Trip

Where Jekyll Island Trumps Tybee Island

The first advantage of Jekyll Island has to do with pet-friendliness. Although Tybee Island allows dogs on the island, our furry friends aren’t permitted on Tybee Island beaches. Ostensibly, this is to protect sea turtles and other wildlife, which is fair enough. However, many of us just like tagging our pups along. The truth is, they’ve become part of the big family. And then, Jekyll Island looks a little more modern and contemporary than Tybee Island. Also, the scenes are better on Jekyll Island—including down on its beaches. Of course, this has little to do with its avant-garde look or ambiance.

When it comes to bike riding, both Tybee Island and Jekyll Island are great spots for switchbacks and all. However, Jekyll Island has trails, a decent 22 miles in length, which are more natural and more picturesque. Also, the winding trails on Jekyll Islands do not see as many crowds as their Tybee Island equivalents. On Jekyll Island, Driftwood Beach is among bikers’ favorites.

Related: Top International Destinations For Cyclists To Go Biking.

Also, for those looking for some romantic privacy, or just some alone time, we’d go with Jekyll Island. This is because Jekyll Island is less crowded than Tybee. Jekyll also easily edges out Tybee Island when it comes to parking. This is crucial for those who’ll be driving to either of Georgia’s top vacation destinations. Since Tybee is usually more crowded than Jekyll, naturally, that alone impacts the ease of getting a parking space. But it’s not just that. Travelers will pay more—in parking fees—on Tybee Island than they would part with on Jekyll Island.

That’s it. As we’ve seen, someone would say that Jekyll Island is the overall winner here. However, it isn’t so clear-cut or uniform.

The 2022 hurricane season saw its last day Wednesday — and although Georgia was spared a direct hit this year from Hurricane Ian in late September, the storm system still managed to take a toll on the state's coastal landscape.

“Hurricane Ian moved the shoreline about 30 feet inland,” said Skidaway Institute of Oceanography director Clark Alexander, referring to part of the beach on Tybee Island. “It did about half as much damage, in moving the shoreline and eroding the shoreline, as a whole two-and-a-half years of erosion under normal, non-hurricane storm damage conditions.”

Tybee's erosion came even as the center of Ian stayed well away from the area, veering further east into the Atlantic Ocean than originally forecast: When the hurricane made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast, Coastal Georgia stood well within the National Hurricane Center's dreaded “cone of uncertainty,” which tracks the probable path of the eye of the storm.

“A single event — even for Hurricane Ian, that moved by us and had a much better track than we had anticipated — can do significant damage to our coastal beaches,” Alexander said.

Fortunately for Tybee, the city managed to mitigate damage through its beach renourishment program — a process in which offsite sand is pumped up from either offshore or underwater deposits, or trucked in from upland sites.

“Tybee beach renourishment is so well planned and they've looked at so many different aspects of shoreline erosion and how to mitigate that, that it's really hard to find negative effects on the island,” Alexander said, adding that the city's beach renourishment program has been in place since the mid-1970s.

Nevertheless, the Skidaway Institute's monitoring has found that Tybee's shoreline — where the high water line meets the upland — has still been moving inland ever since Alexander's team began taking measurements in 2020.

The U.S. Geological Survey has also been conducting monitoring of its own: shortly before Ian's arrival to the U.S., the agency installed hundreds of sensors along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to measure storm tide — an advanced metric that supplements traditional storm surge data with high tide, in order to give a more complete picture of a hurricane's flood impacts.

“It's the amount of surge over and above what you would normally see,” USGS hydrologist Chris Smith explained. “Having a hurricane hit at high tide could cause you to have higher storm surge than hitting at low tide.”

Although relatively little storm tide was recorded in Georgia, the data stands to pay dividends in the future: the USGS shares its figures with multiple government agencies, including the National Weather Service, which uses it to improve its forecast modeling.

The NWS plans to release its first outlook for the 2023 hurricane season in May. In the meantime, officials are advising people to ensure that their families are ready for whatever next year may bring — especially as global warming intensifies hurricanes and the rainfall brought with them.

“What we can expect is to have stronger storms as the climate warms, because there's basically more fuel,” Alexander said. “Hurricanes get their fuel from the moisture and the heat in the upper ocean. So, we expect to have more intense storms. The jury is still kind of out on whether we expect to have more storms. It's just that the ones we do experience will be stronger.”

TYBEE ISLAND , Ga. (WTOC) - A group with the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography has been busy gathering data about the impact Hurricane Ian, had on Tybee Island’s shoreline. They mapped the shoreline before and after the storm.

Since March of 2020, the group has gone out every three months to monitor Tybee’s beaches and their manmade dunes. They fly drones around to develop surface elevation maps for the island and compare them to previous months.

After Hurricane Ian, they saw some significant changes.

“We saw about half the amount of erosion that we would get in a normal year from that one event,” said Dr. Clark Alexander, the director of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

When asked, “that’s pretty significant right?”

Dr. Alexander said, “it is significant and it’s a good thing that we don’t get these storms one right after another.”

In a regular year, Dr. Clark Alexander with the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography says they see about 60 ft. of erosion in areas that are eroding. With Hurricane Ian, the retreat of the shoreline was about 30 ft.

“But we also see about 60 ft. of accretion, so areas where sand is building up.”

Dr. Alexander has studied shoreline changes for 30 years with a specific focus on Tybee for about 2 ½. He says even with Hurricane Ian making landfall in Florida, Tybee saw big changes although not big enough to reorient the shape of the coastline.

“You’re seeing more of a redistribution of material.”

He says after the island finished their renourishment project in 2020, the city started to fund their research to monitor the beach on a quarterly basis. Dr. Alexander says how the city has worked to protect the island was tested during Hurricane Ian.

“All in all, right now the island is in really great shape.”

He says the research they’re doing also helps them learn things like that Tybee will start to see some erosion into their dune structures within the next few years. He says they also use tools lthat use current erosion rates to determine future erosion.

A map shows how far landward the shoreline will move over the next three years.

With this information, the city can plan to do things like targeted renourishment projects.

“It allows us to tell them, next year when you write your budget think about budgeting for 10 dump truck loads of sand to reinforce this area where we know the beaches will be impacted.”

Dr. Alexander says the island did see some impacts from Tropical Storm Nicole as well. He says they will be going out in the next few weeks to assess the beach.

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TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. (WTOC) - On February 5, 1958, two military planes were carrying out a training exercise.

The problem came when a fighter jet crashed into a bomber which had an atomic bomb on board.

“In order to land safely because Hunter Airfield was still under construction, in order to land safely, the only way they could do that was to drop the bomb in the water off Tybee Island,” said Sarah Jones, the executive director of Tybee Historical Society.

The U.S. Military launched a recovery effort the next day. They called off the search after a little over a month and to this day, the bomb hasn’t been found.

Since then, it has become the source of tall tales and legends.

“There was some vague notion that maybe a Russian submarine came in and found the bomb and hauled it off, but if that ever happened, it was never substantiated,” said Jones.

There are different accounts of whether the bomb was actually live when it was lost which causes people to speculate about what kind of risk it poses.

“If it were to go off, some say the explosion would be a mile wide, and that the aftereffects would be up to ten times that amount,” said Jones

Any threat from the weapon is something Tybee Islanders have taken in stride.

Joe Inglesby finds the story intriguing... intriguing enough to put it on a t-shirt.

“We got hats and T-Shirts, and sweatshirts, and all kinds of merchandise. I guess that’s been almost 20 years ago,” said Joe Inglesby, the founder of Tybee Bomb Squad.

Inglesby’s shirts have become such a hot item in local souvenir shops, he’s planning on launching a website and an Instagram page to sell more.

He finds that people just can’t get enough of the Tybee bomb.

“You find out more facts about it and this and that, so it’s- it could go on forever but there’s always someone that wants to know something about it, or thinks they know something about it. It’s a good topic. For Tybee, anyway,” said Inglesby.

The bomb itself was huge. It would’ve weighed over 7,000 pounds.

The Department of Energy believes the bomb is likely in the Wassaw Sound, which sits between Little Tybee Island and Wassaw Island.

But, the official consensus is clear.

If you think you’ve found the bomb or any bomb, for that matter- leave it alone and call 911.

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