I got home yesterday evening after coming from a long hard day of work, on my way in, my roommate was walking out the door to go see a presentation at Stony Brook Southampton about Ocean Surges in New York. It sounded like an interesting topic and something I would enjoy so I tagged along.

When I got there, Dr. Brian Colle of Stony Brook’s Marine Science Department talked about “Climatology and Modeling of Storm Surges in New York’s Coastal Waters”. Here is a brief synopsis of his lecture.

A large fraction of the New York metropolitan region and Long Island is vulnerable to coastal flooding during tropical and extra-tropical cyclones. This talk will explore our understanding of cyclone position, track and strength, and how that favors flooding in the New York region.

There have also been advances in high resolution atmospheric and storm-surge modeling of land-falling cyclones in our region. A few historic storms will be discussed, such as hurricane Gloria (1985), which will highlight the modern difficulties in forecasting storm surges and the implications for emergency response.

This was something really cool to see, he presented computer models of storm path predictions and storm surge levels. Most of the time, the models we see on TV are great but I never truly understood the significance of every single mark on the models, Dr. Colle explained all of that and more. What was the most interesting to me was that in a Category 1 hurricane, the southern coast of Long Island would be experiencing flooding of a couple of meters of water. That is CRAZY!