Re: NHC Releases National Map of Storm Surge Risk
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 11/8/2014, 8:26 pm
People are definitely too familiar with the old way to change. I guess there would also be a problem with some areas being much more surge prone. 10 feet of surge might be much more likely to occur in one place than another location based on a lot of various factors. If you had a map with simply surge values by feet, which would actually be nice to have as well, you would not know how likely it is to occur in an average hurricane. There are the hurricanes that are well outside the norm, but it is nice to know approximately what you might expect with hurricanes that are more common. Some areas don't take much to get a 10 foot surge in a weaker hurricane due to the coastline shape and/or water depth for example. For some areas it might take a significant hurricane to get 10 feet of surge.
It's hard to know what the average person thinks. I guess they need to survey the general public occasionally. I know that not every hurricane is the same and while I want to know what a hurricane of a certain wind category might bring, on average, I know that will always be a bit misleading, perhaps very misleading. But, I know that. I just don't know if the millions of people who don't follow the weather as closely as we do know that.
It would be nice to have an accurate tool, which is most important, to simply be able to increase the surge by 1 foot increments. I just don't know how accurate these maps that are being presented are. Some use Google and some use ArcGIS. To have every single elevation correct along the coast is a big task. (even this map had some information about some areas not being available) I just wonder what percentage of property appraisers have elevation information available easily online. The best thing someone should know, really before you even move into a surge prone area, is how high you would be. That would make the surge ranges from the NHC advisories more relevant to someone. A really nice tool would be a national database that you could simply input your address into and easily get that info. FEMA has flood maps you can get that way ( https://msc.fema.gov/portal ) but getting an actual elevation for the building you are in would be really nice. |
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