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North atlantic tropical cyclones and U.S. flooding
Journal article   Open access

North atlantic tropical cyclones and U.S. flooding

Gabriele Villarini, Radoslaw Goska, James A Smith and Gabriel A Vecchi
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol.95(9), pp.1381-1388
2014
DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00060.1
url
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00060.1View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Riverine flooding associated with North Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) is responsible for large societal and economic impacts. The effects of TC flooding are not limited to the coastal regions, but affect large areas away from the coast, and often away from the center of the storm. Despite these important repercussions, inland TC flooding has received relatively little attention in the scientific literature, although there has been growing media attention following Hurricanes Irene (2011) and Sandy (2012). Based on discharge data from 1981 to 2011, the authors provide a climatological view of inland flooding associated with TCs, leveraging the wealth of discharge measurements collected, archived, and disseminated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Florida and the eastern seaboard of the United States (from South Carolina to Maine and Vermont) are the areas that are the most susceptible to TC flooding, with typical TC flood peaks that are 2 to 6 times larger than the local 10-yr flood peak, causing ma...

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