Hurricane Francine brings storm surge threat to Gulf Coast; what is storm surge?
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Hurricane Francine will bring a multitude of threats to parts of the Gulf Coast, including possible damaging winds, flooding rain, tornadoes and storm surge. You often hear the term “storm surge” mentioned during approaching hurricanes, but what does that mean exactly?
Storm surge is caused by the powerful winds from a storm which can push water from the ocean (or other bodies of water) toward the coast. When this push is strong enough, storm surge causes flooding as water moves onto normally dry areas of land.
If you want to get really technical, something called “storm tide” is the rise in water from the tide plus the push of water caused by the storm. However, to keep things simple during an approaching storm, the general public can think of storm surge as the level of water that occurs on ground that is normally dry.
As of Wednesday morning, the NOAA storm surge forecast is shown below. This can be thought of as a “worst case scenario” forecast as it’s impossible to predict exactly how high the water will go. Notice that parts of the central Louisiana coast could could see storm surge up to 5 to 10 feet, which is shown in red.
If you really think about it, 5 to 10 feet is a lot of water! Imagine a park that is normally dry, and then imagine water as high as 5 to 10 feet sitting on the park. Hopefully, storm surge is at the lower end of the forecast.
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