Transition zones are stretches of river where extreme water levels can arise through the interaction of multiple drivers such as elevated river discharge, storm surge, and high tide (Bilskie & Hagen, 2018). Transition zones are likely to exist along rivers throughout the world and tend to be most dramatically revealed during catastrophic flood events, such as Hurricane Harvey (2017) where coincident heavy rainfall and surge flooded Houston and the surrounding area (Stephens et al., 2022;Valle-Levinson et al., 2020). In January 2012, elevated inland water levels triggered precautionary evacuations in the northern Netherlands, as storm surges blocked gravity-driven