Flood Barrier USA

1000-Year Floods Expected on East Coast

Author: Donna Conneely

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A mammoth hurricane threatened the entire US east coast in late October as residents awaited anxiously for the storm to make landfall. Conditions were perfect to produce a tempest the likes of which may not have been seen for centuries. The enormous size of the storm alarmed authorities.

An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the U.S. East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project

Hurricane Sandy would have been frightening enough by itself; moving in the opposite direction, on a collision course with the hurricane, there was also a huge early winter storm. As if that was not bad enough, the coastline was experiencing extreme high tides thanks to a full moon.

The city of New York took a particularly devastating hit, with much of Manhattan lying just 5 feet above sea level. Before the storm even made land, the storm surge had already topped six feet. Subways and tunnels were closed in anticipation of certain flooding, and the crucial Wall Street financial district was closed. Authorities have estimated that almost 50 million citizens would be affected by flooding and other damage from this super-storm.

As hospitals, schools, and public building scrambled to put emergency flood protection measures into place before the storm hit, meteorologists were calling this a 1000-Year Flood. But as climate change, rising sea levels, increased frequency of hurricanes and storms, and greater coastal population all come together to produce these events on a more regular basis, flood protection will become a major emphasis in new construction projects. Established buildings must be retrofitted with flood panels or barriers to ensure that crippling damages will not occur with every storm. As “100-Year Floods” become  bi-annual events, so too will the so-called 1000-Year Floods strike with ever increasing regularity.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2012 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Flood Protection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.