Our upcoming storm brings more than snow. With a strong easterly component to the wind, water will be pushed into Long Island Sound. It doesn’t look like Sandy type numbers, but the water will be quite high.
At the top of this entry is the surge prediction for New London. Let me explain how it works.
Total water = Tide prediction + Surge
The New London evening high tide appears on tide tables as one foot over mean sea level. As high tides go that’s actually a little lower than usual.
At that time storm surge will add approximately 3 feet additional water. So, 3+1 means about four feet above mean sea level. Waves aren’t predicted in this model, but they’ll ride atop this tide.
Bad–not horrible. However, there’s one more thing to look at.
Notice the peak surge comes after the high tide. The tide will be receding, so even this increasingly higher surge produces a lower water level.
If the predictions are off… if the surge comes earlier, the observed water level will be higher than this prediction.
Farther west it’s the same story at Bridgeport (no point prediction is run for New Haven or other shoreline tide sites). The highest surge there adds 4.5 feet and comes a few hours before high tide. At 7.76′ it’s high enough to cause flooding, but not a catastrophe.
I’ll keep an eye on these as we get closer to the action.
