Hurricane Matthew Took A Big Bite Out Of Southeastern States' Beaches

Beaches in the Southeastern U.S. took a tremendous beating last month from Hurricane Matthew. The U.S. Geological Survey has found that the storm washed over and damaged 15 percent of sand dunes on Florida's Atlantic Coast, 30 percent along Georgia's coastline and 42 percent of the dunes on South Carolina beaches.

In Florida, few coastal areas were hit harder by the hurricane than the 18 miles of dunes and beaches in Flagler County. County Administrator Craig Coffey says, "What Matthew did to us essentially [was] eat about 30 feet of coastline all the way along the county, and created a bunch of breaches through that dune system."

Matthew also washed out a big chunk of coastal highway A1A in Flagler Beach. The state and county are working to have that road repaired and open within 45 days. Fixing that highway is important, Coffey says. But he is equally worried about damage to the county's beaches and dunes, which provide the community with important protection from tides, wave action and storm surge.

When Hurricane Matthew overtopped and breached Flagler County's beaches, some 800 homes were flooded. Coffey says, "We're trying to figure out how can we protect those for next hurricane season so we don't have more breaches. We literally were fighting breaches in about 10 locations." Flagler County is hoping federal money will be available to help it begin restoring the dunes, which provide protection for hundreds of coastal homes.

Photos taken before Hurricane Matthew (Sept. 6, 2014, above) and after (Oct. 13, 2016, below) show that the storm cut a new inlet between the Atlantic Ocean and the Matanzas River near St. Augustine, Fla., stripping away a 12-foot dune and carrying sand into the estuary.

Many other communities are facing similar problems. The USGS says 53 miles of dunes were damaged and overtopped in Florida. In Georgia, 32 miles of shoreline were affected. Seventy-seven miles of dunes were damaged in South Carolina.

Hilary Stockdon, a research oceanographer at USGS, says a survey of the beaches compared aerial photos taken before and after the storm. It showed extensive beach erosion all along the Southeast Atlantic coast, Stockdon says, "where waves removed sand from beaches and sharply eroded sand dunes. There were locations where houses were undermined or roads were undermined. And we also saw locations where the sand was pushed inland."

After small storms, Stockdon says, beaches and dunes can recover naturally. With major storms like Hurricane Matthew, though, sand is washed inland and bulldozed away, she says. Restoring sand dunes after those events often requires big engineering projects.

Photos taken before Hurricane Matthew (Sept. 6, 2014) and after (Oct. 14, 2016) show that the storm washed away a 16-foot sand dune, destroying boardwalks and decks and exposing a seawall at Vilano Beach, Fla.

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track hurricane Joaquin with the USGS

interactive features updated daily.

http://marine.usgs.gov/coastalchangehazardsportal/

Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area is the most vulnerable U.S. region to flood damages from a hurricane

A new study from Karen Clark & Co. shows the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area is the most vulnerable U.S. region to flood damages from a hurricane.

As opposed to most other vulnerability studies, this one considers property damages from a storm surge associated with a 100-year hurricane.

The 100-year hurricane is an event for which there is a 1 percent chance of occurrence each year. Tampa’s 100-year hurricane is defined as a strong category 4 with top winds of 150 mph. Damages from the storm surge associated with such a hurricane would reach up to $175 billion.

Losses in the region are predicted to be higher than those in New Orleans ($130 billion), New York City ($100 billion) and Miami ($80 billion).

Sarasota ranks as the seventh-most vulnerable city with projected losses of $50 million.

The large, shallow continental shelf off the coast of west Florida combined with the funnel effect of water surging into the bay could lead to a massive amount of property damage in the surrounding areas, the study shows. The study also states that the majority of the potential flood damage is not currently insured.

NOAA's hurricane season outlook

" 'A below-normal season doesn't mean we're off the hook. As we've seen before, below-normal seasons can still produce catastrophic impacts to communities," said NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, Ph.D., referring to the 1992 season in which only seven named storms formed, yet the first was Andrew – a Category 5 Major Hurricane that devastated South Florida."

BTW- hurricane season starts June 1st!

iCoast: Did the Coast Change?

Hurricane season started again in June. Do you know what happens to our coasts after these extreme storms? The U.S. Geological Survey has launched a new crowdsourcing application called “iCoast – Did the Coast Change?” to show you these coastal changes from extreme storms.
 
Since 1995, the USGS has collected more than 140,000aerial photographs of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts after 24 hurricanes and other extreme storms. For Hurricane Sandy alone, more than 9,000 aerial photographs were taken a week after the storm. iCoast allows citizen scientists to identify changes to the coast by comparing these aerial photographs taken before and after storms.
 
Crowdsourced data from iCoast will help USGS improve predictive models of coastal change and educate the public about the vulnerability of coastal communities to extreme storms. Currently, USGS’s mathematical models are derived from dune elevation and predicted wave action during storms. Adding the human observations will allow the scientists to validate the models and to provide better predictions of damage before storms occur.  scientific american

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/icoast/

how global climate change (specifically warming) affects storms

All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be."^[31] Although NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling attributes Sandy to "little more than the coincidental alignment of a tropical storm with an extratropical storm",^[32] Trenberth does agree that the storm was caused by "natural variability" but adds that it was "enhanced by global warming".^[33] One factor contributing to the storm's strength was abnormally warm sea surface temperatures offshore the East Coast of the United States—more than 3 °C (5 °F) above normal, to which global warming had contributed 0.6 °C (1 °F).^[33] As the temperature of the atmosphere increases, the capacity to hold water increases, leading to stronger storms and higher rainfall amounts.^[33]

madden julian oscillation

The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) is the largest element of the intraseasonal (30–90 day) variability in the tropical atmosphere, and was discovered by Roland Madden and Paul Julian of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1971. It is a large-scale coupling between atmospheric circulation and tropical deep convection.[1][2] Rather than being a standing pattern like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the MJO is a traveling pattern that propagates eastward at approximately 4 to 8 m/s (9 to 18 mph), through the atmosphere above the warm parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. This overall circulation pattern manifests itself in various ways, most clearly as anomalous rainfall. (Again, the comparison with ENSO is instructive, since their local effects on Peruvian fisheries were discovered long before the global structure of the pattern was recognized.)[not verified in body]

The MJO is characterized by an eastward progression of large regions of both enhanced and suppressed tropical rainfall, observed mainly over the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The anomalous rainfall is usually first evident over the western Indian Ocean, and remains evident as it propagates over the very warm ocean waters of the western and central tropical Pacific. This pattern of tropical rainfall then generally becomes nondescript as it moves over the cooler ocean waters of the eastern Pacific (except over the region of warmer water off the west coast of Central America) but occasionally reappears at low amplitude over the tropical Atlantic and higher amplitude over the Indian Ocean. The wet phase of enhanced convection and precipitation is followed by a dry phase where thunderstorm activity is suppressed. Each cycle lasts approximately 30–60 days. Because of this pattern, The MJO is also known as the 30–60 day oscillation, 30–60 day wave, or intraseasonal oscillation. wiki

coastal flooding by tropical cyclones and sea-level rise

Jonathan Woodruff, Jennifer Irish, and Suzana Camargo

Nature; Vol 504; December 5, 2013

…the Western North Pacific has been the most prolific tropical cyclone basin over the instrumental record, both in terms of the overall number of tropical cyclones (30% of global activity) and peak tropical cyclone wind intensities (Fig. 1). However, in recent decades this basin accounted for neither the majority of economic nor human losses from tropical cyclones. These records have been held by two of the least active tropical cyclone basins, the North Atlantic (10% of global tropical cyclone activity) and North Indian Ocean (5% of global tropical cyclone activity), respectively. Since 1970, around 65% of all lives lost as a result of tropical cyclones occurred within the North Indian Ocean — equivalent to more than half a million deaths³. Over this same period, more than 60% of all economic losses from tropical cyclones took place in the North Atlantic — amounting to around US$400 billion³.

kitty hawk, nc on ash wednesday 1962

hurricane comin' our way

hms bounty

sandy report

http://bcove.me/k6eq2gnb

reporting is in the details

this time tomorrow

irene will be here.

shark street

After Hurricane Irene hit Puerto Rico, the streets were so flooded that a shark managed to be swimming around. 

irene