At least four homes along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore have crumbled amid high winds and rough surf.

By Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2026

It happened again. And again. And again.

Three more homes along North Carolina’s Outer Banks collapsed into the sea overnight Sunday and into Monday morning, bringing the total to four since a winter storm over the weekend battered the barrier islands with snow, high winds and roiling surf.

Officials with the National Park Service said the latest collapse happened about 9 a.m. Monday along an erosion-plagued stretch of coastline, hours after two other unoccupied houses met a similar fate. Those incidents followed the demise of a nearby home in the early-morning hours on Sunday.

The latest collapses left fresh heaps of debris littering the beaches and miles of surf near Buxton, a small town along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore where 19 homes have surrendered to the sea since the middle of September.

The beach in front of the entire village of Buxton remained closed Monday, and Park Service spokesman Mike Barber said in a statement that the agency “advises everyone to stay away from the collapse sites and the surrounding beach area, due to potentially hazardous debris.”

Photos and videos by local residents that were posted online captured the most recent collapse, as the gray-shingled home’s wooden pilings snapped and buckled in the morning sun. Nearby, a septic tank sat exposed to the tides. “There it goes,” a resident recording the video says.

Other images foretell what inevitably will be a slow cleanup. Shingles and furniture cushions, siding and twisted lumber sat in soaking piles along the beach. “The debris field is scattered for miles to the south and out to sea,” one resident wrote.

The fallen homes were not the only casualty of the storm, which brought blizzard-like conditions to Hatteras Island, with winds gusting to 45 mph and waves off Cape Hatteras reaching up to 20 feet.

On Monday morning, the North Carolina Department of Transportation said that N.C. 12, the key roadway through the Outer Banks, remained closed in multiple places “as we continue to see ocean overwash from this weekend’s nor’easter.”

While the storm that wreaked havoc in the area had moved out to sea, the National Weather Service warned Monday that a high-surf advisory would remain in effect and that “large breaking waves of 8 to 12 feet” remained possible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/02/02/outer-banks-homes-winter-storm-collapse/