📋 Tender Overview
Today NOAA upgraded its Probabilistic Storm Surge P-Surge model the primary model for predicting storm surge associated with high-impact weather like hurricanes and tropical storms to version 3.0. This upgrade advances storm surge modeling and forecasting for the contiguous U.S. CONUS Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and comes just in time for the 2023 hurricane season beginning on June 1 and running through November 30.The upgrade includes a number of new capabilities that will help forecasters better understand the risk of storm surge such asNew forecasts for surge tide and waves for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.The ability to run the model simultaneously for two storms. This capability can help during two landfalling storms impacting the CONUS or one storm impacting the CONUS and one impacting Puerto Rico andor the U.S. Virgin Islands.Improved model calculations of friction over different types of land surfaces which helps more accurately compute the extent of water inundation along the coast.We are seeing a sharp increase in catastrophic storm surge impacts in our coastal communities said Ken Graham director of NOAAs National Weather Service. Our new capabilities to effectively and accurately model and forecast storm surge is critical to upholding the NWS mission of protection of life and property.Storm surge is the abnormal rise of water generated by a storm over and above the predicted astronomical tide. This rise in water can cause extreme flooding in coastal areas.Storm surge can devastate coastal communities. The first version of the P-Surge model released in 2008 by NOAAs Meteorological Development Laboratory was galvanized by the significant impacts of storm surge on communities along the Outer Banks of North Carolina and southeast Virginia following Hurricane Isabel in 2003.P-Surge brings a probabilistic approach to the modeling of storm surge by generating a range and likelihood of possible storm surge values. It is run in advance of hurricanes and tropical storms that may impact the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and now Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.The model uses official wind forecasts from NOAAs National Hurricane Center NHC as well as NHCs historic 5-year average errors in track size and intensity of storms to create a collection of roughly 500 to 1000 representative wind and pressure inputs. Those inputs are fed into NOAAs Sea Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes SLOSH model which computes water levels and inundation due to storm surge and tide. P-Surge combines the resulting water level outputs from SLOSH with the likelihood of the representative inputs from NHC data to create probabilistic products. This approach provides a range of possible outcomes based on the percent chance of each and allows NWS forecasters to communicate worst-case scenarios to core partners and the general public.
