When Adam delved

When Irene hit the east coast, I speculated out loud a few times about how excited New jersey's metal detectorists must be.

Turns out, it's been a bit of a bust, at least in NY:

"But it’s not as good as we hoped," he said. "We were all hoping it would pull a lot of layers off, so the gravelly layer is exposed where all the jewelry and coins drift down to."
...
[But] The storm hit at high tide, explained Mike McMeekin, 59, an avid treasure hunter from Long Island who owns Treasures Unlimited, a popular store in Bellmore that sells metal detectors.

"If it would have hit at low tide, it would have cut the beach up and down and you might have cross-sections where you could be looking at layers of beach from the 1930s or the 1950s," he said. "A storm like that could bring you back in time."

As it happened, the storm added sand to many sections of city ocean beaches, he said. The waves washed up loads of offshore sand high up on the beach.

"Now, you have coins and jewelry in that sand, too," he said, "but you got to wait for the wind to start blowing off the top, so we can get to it."