Looking back at the 2023 hurricane season's effects up and down the East Coast

AccuWeather

From damaging winds in Florida to coastal erosion in Delaware, AccuWeather's Bill Wadell looks back at the varied impacts of this year's hurricane season.

Transcript

00:00 Accuweather's Bill Waddell was out in the wind and rain covering all the big storms this year.

00:06 Bill, you know, we warned people that Florida was in the danger this season and they took one of the hardest hits.

00:13 Listen, we didn't have a lot of impacts along the U.S., thankfully, but one of the biggest was Edalia.

00:22 Absolutely, yeah, that was the big storm.

00:24 It put so many people on alert from Tampa Bay all the way to the big bend of Florida.

00:29 I know you spoke with Reid Timmer earlier. He was down by the coast.

00:32 We know that part of the Gulf of Mexico is so vulnerable to storm surge.

00:36 So I was working with storm chaser Mike Scantlin and we set up about 20 miles inland in the Perry area.

00:43 So we didn't see storm surge there.

00:45 What we saw was a lot of wind from Edalia bringing down those really tall pine trees in the big bend of Florida.

00:51 You'll see the video. We had trees coming down on houses, blocking roads, and especially those little coastal towns.

00:58 There's only one road in and out.

01:00 So that's why evacuations were so important this time around.

01:03 And we spoke with a volunteer search and rescue member right after landfall.

01:08 He told us he was surprised and relieved that so many people followed those evacuation orders.

01:14 There were very few rescues.

01:15 And he says a lot of lessons were learned after Hurricane Ian hammered the Fort Myers Beach area last year.

01:21 He was just so thankful that people listened to the warnings and they got out before landfall.

01:27 Then later it was New England that was put on alert.

01:31 I'll tell you what, it was Hurricane Lee that moved up the eastern seaboard.

01:35 That was a pretty difficult forecast.

01:36 Now eventually there was not a landfall in the United States.

01:40 It was in Nova Scotia.

01:42 Dr. Reid Timmer was on Nova Scotia for that.

01:45 But along Cape Cod and eastern parts of Maine there were impacts.

01:49 Oh definitely Bernie.

01:52 Yeah, Tony Lahlbeck was in Maine.

01:54 I was in Cape Cod.

01:56 And we saw a lot of wind, a lot of rough surf.

02:00 Thankfully that storm stayed far enough offshore that we did not see a lot of major impacts.

02:05 We did see some isolated power outages from tree limbs coming down, power lines coming down.

02:10 But that storm was really an important reminder for people in New England

02:16 that hurricanes, tropical threats, they are possible up there.

02:19 They don't happen all that often.

02:21 But when they do, they can cause some big issues.

02:23 So it's important for people in that part of the country to be prepared,

02:27 especially for next hurricane season.

02:28 But they really dodged a bullet.

02:30 And beyond some rough wind, rough surf, a lot of people in Cape Cod looked out.

02:34 Didn't have to deal with much damage.

02:35 And then we had the classic subtropical development where you get these upper level lows.

02:41 They come off the southeast coast.

02:43 I remember we were on this one.

02:45 And it turned into tropical storm Ophelia, one of those upper lows.

02:48 And it almost was a hurricane as it made landfall in North Carolina.

02:52 Now, we sent you north to the Delaware Coast on the northern side.

02:56 And boy, there was a lot of problems with storm surge there.

02:59 Absolutely.

03:01 A lot of storm surge, a lot of coastal flooding in those low-lying spots,

03:05 especially in Bethany Beach, where we were doing our live reports that morning during the storm.

03:10 Those typical low-lying areas saw a lot of flooding.

03:14 And when you have that mix of freshwater and saltwater,

03:16 that's a whole other combination of problems if it makes it into buildings

03:20 or you have those floodwaters getting up underneath the cars.

03:23 The big story in Delaware was that coastal erosion.

03:26 That has been an issue, Bernie, for a long time in Delaware.

03:30 And this storm washed away a lot of sand.

03:33 Delaware invested millions of dollars hauling in tons of fresh sand this past spring and summer

03:39 to refresh and rejuvenate those beaches.

03:42 A lot of that was all washed away in just a matter of 48 hours.

03:46 And they've still got some cleaning up to do and probably a lot of beach renourishment

03:51 that's going to have to happen before the next tourist season,

03:54 before all the families try to return to the beaches in Delaware next summer.

03:58 And as we look back, Bill, your biggest takeaway of the season?

04:01 My biggest takeaway was that we did see some big impacts,

04:07 but we saw a lot of lessons learned after last year

04:10 and I think back to the 2020 hurricane season that was just awful.

04:14 Some of the hardest things is to get people to evacuate early,

04:17 to take those precautions early.

04:19 And we heard that from a number of first responders and local leaders,

04:22 is that thankfully this hurricane season people paid attention,

04:26 people prepared, people got out of the way.

04:28 And Bernie, I'm glad there's not much more damage

04:30 because we know insurance rates are already high.

04:33 They could have gone a lot higher if we saw multiple regions with big damage this year.

04:37 All right, thanks, Bill.

04:38 Well, more on the impacts and lessons learned from this hurricane season tonight

04:42 on AccuWeather Prime.

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