Coastal Dune Blowout

Coastal Dune Blowout is an original illustration set in North Atlantic Coastal Dunes. It lies in mid-latitudes, where the climate is humid subtropical — hot summers, no dry season.

A deep saucer-shaped hollow has been cut clean through a vegetated dune ridge. The eroded rim is scalloped, with grass roots left hanging exposed. The bare sand floor narrows into a tongue spreading downwind, and marram grass bends away from the gap.

Why is there a bare hollow cut through the dune grass?

A blowout starts wherever the vegetation mat is broken — a path, a storm, a burrow — and once bare sand is exposed the wind excavates through the gap and keeps widening it. The exposed roots show how deeply the grass had been holding the dune together. The depositional tongue on the far side is the same sand, simply relocated, and it points downwind.

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