At the mid-September peak of a very active Atlantic Hurricane Season, with four named storms and three tropical disturbances on the move at the same time, some USGS scientists are responding to multiple storms at once. Their fast-paced work will help emergency managers and coastal planners protect lives and property from coastal erosion and flooding, and will provide scientists with real-world information that can make future storm surge, flood and coastal change forecasts more accurate.
While the USGS Coastal Change Storm Hazards team is forecasting the coastal erosion Hurricane Sally is expected to cause at landfall along the Gulf Coast, the team is simultaneously predicting the impact that far-traveling ocean waves from Hurricane Paulette and Tropical Storm Teddy will have on sandy shorelines in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern U.S.
Meanwhile scientists who set out instruments to monitor Hurricane Laura’s storm surge when it made landfall on the Southwest Louisiana-East Texas coast Aug. 27 have had to pause their work recovering those instruments. Instead, they deployed a new set of devices to monitor Hurricane Sally’s expected landfall on the Southeast Louisiana-Mississippi coast.
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Image via USGS.