In Time For Arthur & The Fourth, NHC Rolls Out Experimental Storm Surge Map System

Tropical Storm Arthur, the first named storm of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, is slowly churning its way up the East Coast. Expected to become a hurricane before Thursday, Arthur could make landfall in North Carolina, bringing with it a surge of seawater.

The threat has prompted the National Hurricane Center (NHC) to roll out for the first time its experimental storm surge maps, in an effort to help coastal residents better appreciate the dangers of such a sudden influx of water.

As Hurricane Sandy made clear, the damage caused by tropical cyclones, the generic term for tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons, comes largely from their storm surge, not their winds. After several storms that produced large storm surges and wreaked havoc on coastal areas — particularly Hurricane Ike, which hit Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 13, 2008 — made it clear that these surges were an underappreciated threat by the public, the NHC developed maps that would show exactly how a given storm’s surge was expected to affect a particular area.

“This is a really desperately needed update,” Jamie Rhome, a storm surge specialist with the NHC who is heading the mapping effort, told Climate Central at the beginning of the hurricane season (which started on June 1).

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-storm-surge-maps-debut-with-ts-arthur-17720