The deadly impacts of storm surge

AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer takes a look at what storm surge is and the impacts it can have.

Transcript

00:00On a late September night, ocean water very aggressively taking over the landscape here.

00:05This was the landfall of Hurricane Helene last year in Florida.

00:09While the storm would go on to be known for its catastrophic flooding of North Carolina,

00:13it did its share of damage to Florida.

00:15Storm surge near landfall was estimated between 12 to 16 feet.

00:19Even before it made landfall, around 5 feet of storm surge in Naples, Florida, closed businesses.

00:24There were 14 people that lost their life in Helene's storm surge.

00:28So we already know it can have very deadly impacts, but what exactly is storm surge?

00:33It's that abnormal rise in seawater as a storm is coming ashore.

00:37Most of this comes from the wind pushing the ocean water right into the coastline.

00:42With it, nowhere else to go, so the water just overtakes the land.

00:46And that's part of the problem here, because with major storm surge,

00:49we do often see this pushing not only in creating beach erosion,

00:52but pushing into the coastline and overtaking buildings.

00:55The water can rise as high as 20 feet in spots,

00:59and there are several storms that have seen that to be the case.

01:02But what is the determining factors of storm surge?

01:05Well, there's a lot of things that go into it.

01:07First, how strong the hurricane is.

01:09The speed at which the hurricane is moving can also help to push extra water into the coastline.

01:14The size of the storm, is it 100 miles wide or 400 miles wide?

01:19That makes a difference, because it's pushing more water into the coast if it is wider.

01:22And the angle of the approach to the coast, plus the topography of the coast itself,

01:28can all factor into things.

01:29Like I said, storm surge can end up being upwards to 20 feet.

01:33One of the greatest storm surges in the coastal U.S. that we've seen in recent memory

01:38has been Hurricane Katrina, with 25 to 28 feet of storm surge estimated there on the Mississippi coast.

01:45It would quickly overtake homes and anyone that's in its path.