Originally Posted By: DesertFox
I don't have the figures but there was flooding in Evacuation Zone B, which was predicted to need evacuation only in the case of Class 2 or 3 hurricanes. The Mayor called for a mandatory evacuation in Zone A only(flooding in Class 1 hurricanes).

The combination of high tide, full moon and hurricane made the tidal surge much higher than anticipated. Undoubtedly, some in Zone B were caught off guard.
It turns out that maximum wind speed (the Category 1..2...etc scale) is not the only important variable for predicting storm surge. There is a better metric called "Integrated Kinetic Energy" (IKE) which takes into account not only wind speed, but the area over which those winds blow. I posted a couple of links about this over on the "Lessons from Hurricane Sandy" thread, but will re-post one link here.

According hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy at Superstorm Sandy packed more total energy than Hurricane Katrina at landfall:

Quote:
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the storm surge generated by a hurricane is not very well correlated with the storm’s intensity or peak winds, but rather the storm’s size - which the IKE metric captures. The area over which strong winds blow across the ocean is strongly related to the resulting storm surge potential.

Although Sandy was only about Category 1 at landfall, the large area the storm covered made for a much bigger storm surge than would have been predicted based only on wind speed.


Edited by AKSAR (11/19/12 09:19 PM)
Edit Reason: fixed my bad spelling
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