Storm wave runups and sea level variations for the September 2017 Hurricane Maria along the coast of Dominica, eastern Caribbean sea: evidence from field surveys and sea-level data analysis

Abstract

Dominica, along with several other Caribbean islands, was severely damaged by category-5 Hurricane Maria in September 2017. The hurricane left 68 people dead or missing, marking Maria as the worst natural catastrophe to hit this small island nation. Here, we report the results of our coastal runup field survey in February 2018 and of tide gauge sea-level data analysis. Analysis of tide gauge records shows that the duration of Maria's surge varied between 2.1 and 2.6 days in the Caribbean region and was 2.1 days at Marigot, Dominica. The surge amplitude was 75 cm in Marigot, which indicates that the size of the surge was small for a category-5 hurricane. The measured field survey runups were from 1.0 to 3.7 m, with the maximum runup at Scotts Head on the southern tip of Dominica. The largest measured runups were concentrated along the west coast of the southern half of the island and consistently decreased northwards. We attribute the observed damage to coastal structures to four mechanisms: surge/wave erosion; surge/wave forces/impacts; debris impacts to coastal structures involving in particular floating tree debris brought to the sea by river floods associated with Hurricane Maria; and intense coastal sedimentation, involving sediment brought to the sea by river floods. A flowchart of the hurricane-driven damage mechanisms is presented which provides the propagating sequence, or cascade, of events that contributed to damage and emphasizes the interactions between different processes in the hurricane. ARTICLE HISTORY

Field surveys and numerical modeling of the August 2016 Typhoon Lionrock along the northeastern coast of Japan: the first typhoon making landfall in Tohoku region

“…This was evidenced in other typhoons and hurricanes worldwide too (Fritz et al 2007). The reason for this can be attributed to various mechanisms that contribute to damage/death during a typhoon (Heidarzadeh et al 2018). For example, most damage/death during the 2016 Typhoon Lionrock was due to inland flooding, while the wind-blown debris Approximate locations of the photographs are: 39.6431° N and 141.9597° E for panels "a" and "b" and 39.6305° N and 141.9245° E for panels "c" and "d" and falling debris were responsible for most of the damage/death of the 1991 Typhoon Mireille.…”

“…Using the de-tided waveforms, the storm surge amplitudes were measured. Storm surge level was calculated by taking a 1-h moving average of the de-tided waveforms (e.g., Heidarzadeh et al 2018Heidarzadeh et al , 2020aYalciner et al 2014; Heidarzadeh and Satake 2013b). The period of storm surges is in the order of days justifying the application of a 1-h moving average.…”

“…2). Inundation distance is the straight distance between the high-tide shoreline and the maximum extent of the seawater penetration inland (Heidarzadeh et al 2018(Heidarzadeh et al , 2020b. High-tide shoreline at the time of the survey can be approximated as the upper limit of the wet area of the coast which is usually easily visible.…”

“…Extreme coastal flows observed during recent coastal environmental hazards such as tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons have transformed the knowledge of coastal engineering by revealing the shortcomings of the coastal construction. The past 16 years (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020) has witnessed a series of such extreme events, among which are the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Synolakis and Bernard 2006;Rabinovich and Thomson 2007), the 2005 Hurricane Katrina (Robertson et al 2007;Fritz et al 2007), the 2007 Cyclone Sidr (Paul 2009), the 2008 Cyclone Nargis (Fritz et al 2009), the 2010 Maule (Chile) tsunami (Rabinovich et al 2013;Mas et al 2012;Fritz et al 2011), the 2011 Japan tsunami (Tsuji et al 2011;Suppasri et al 2012;Heidarzadeh and Satake 2013a), the 2012 Hurricane Sandy (Irish et al 2013), 2013 Super Typhoon Haiyan (Shimozono et al 2015;Takagi et al 2017), the 2017 Hurricane Maria (Heidarzadeh et al 2018) and the 2018 Super Typhoon Jebi in Japan (Le et al 2019). These extreme coastal environmental events produced structural forces far beyond the design loads and caused the structures to fail in novel failure modes.…”

Combined hazard of typhoon-generated meteorological tsunamis and storm surges along the coast of Japan

“…Typhoons are usually associated with a number of hazards in a cascading order, including severe storm waves, wind-blown debris, storm surges, extreme seiches, intensive rainfall, landslides and debris flows (cf. Heidarzadeh et al 2018Heidarzadeh et al , 2020b. Among these hazards, the two common and coinciding ones are seiches (meteotsunamis) and storm surge.…”