Devil's Churn Almost Dry? What's Happening to the Oregon Coast Landmark

Published 08/24/2026 at 8:55 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Yachats, Oregon) – So, is the Devil's Churn near Yachats drying up? (Photos Jamie Bourbon)

Low tides don't explain this - they do not create this kind of look at the Churn.

Something is amiss at the central Oregon coast landmark. As in, the water seems to be missing. The ocean is usually a crazed constant chaos here, with the 36-million-year-old rock here compressing wave action into some wild action. It's high enough to toss logs all the way to the back of the thing. Even in calmer conditions, this one is not safe to bounce around.

Now?

Central Oregon coast resident Jamie Bourbon caught this irregular and unusual moment: the Churn is not so Churn-y. Not so devilish, either. It seems to be drained.

She snapped this late last week, showing the water timidly lapping at the outer edges of the basalt chasm, and not roaring inward and all bonkers as usual.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see dry sand there,” she told Oregon Coast Beach Connection.

The Churn's usual look (Oregon Coast Beach Connection)

So, who pulled the plug?

Well, not so fast. Summer's high sand levels do some kooky things. Sands build up and suddenly one beach that's normally pretty small is extended outward, sometimes by hundreds of feet.

In winter, all that wave action scours out sand. That's when you get cool stuff like ancient ghost forests showing up or hidden shipwrecks.

Photo Bourbon

Summer's calm waves allow sand to pile up, and the result is a higher berm – the sandy section of beach between the vegetation line and the tide line. If sand piles up high enough, it begins to form a kind of sand bar that grows outward until it literally pushes the tide much farther out than usual, giving that area an effect like a constant state of extreme low tide event.

Some spots get more affected than others. Devil's Churn is one that is notoriously steadfast in its chaos factor: it stays rather filled up in summer. This current state of the tides being far out there is fairly unusual.

See more Cool to Kooky Things That Sand Levels Can Do to Oregon Coast in Summer -

Part of this was low tide, plain and simple. But low tide normally just calms down the Churn, not empties it.

Bourbon caught something maybe even a bit historic. It's fairly rare.

A cropped version of Bourbon's photo shows a dry back end of the Churn.

Other areas on the Oregon coast and Washington coast will be quite extended now as well, though maybe not so wildly so as the Devil's Churn.

During summer, Oceanside can be so wide you don't need the tunnel. Arch Cape may let you walk around the big sea stacks to the other side. A lot of rocky shelves with sands normally covered up by waves around Yachats can suddenly be fairly wide open. Bandon can be super accessible around those rocky spires. And beaches like Manzanita – already quite wide - can extended by hundreds of feet.

Always know the tide tables (links to individual areas at the Oregon Coast Weather page).

Some areas are wide open enough to explore for a bit. Hopping down into the Churn when it's like this is not going to be safe under any circumstances.

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