RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – When John Couch is certain a storm will hit Hatteras Island, he goes into action, moving merchandise in his auto parts store from bottom shelves to top ones and hauling away the most valuable items.
But at 64 years old, Couch is less and less enamored of spending eight hours packing up his property. So his ears perked up when he learned about a new forecasting model from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association that’s intended to give a better idea of how much ocean water will overrun an area.
“Any and all information is always helpful,” says Couch, who owns the Lighthouse Service Center and Lighthouse Auto Parts along North Carolina’s Outer Banks. “You don’t want to put up stuff unless you really have to.”
The USGS is running its coastal change forecast model to predict how far a storm’s waves will push water up the beach – whether it will go just to the dunes, over the dunes, or even farther onto roads and property. Oceanographers are in the pilot stages of a new implementation of the model that would predict beach changes in all weather conditions.
As part of the pilot program, hour-by-hour forecasts of potential beachfront changes caused by wave conditions are underway in some areas of North Carolina, Massachusetts and Florida, said USGS research oceanographer Hilary Stockdon. The pilot program runs all the time for all sorts of weather, not just big storms such as hurricanes and nor’easters. Eventually, the forecasts – which give details for the coming days – will be available for all Gulf and Atlantic states up to 102 hours before storms.