The Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model
- Provides real time forecasting and hurricane storm surge inundation maps for the U.S. Atlantic coast, Oahu, the Bahama Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. (source: http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/surge_images.asp).
- Accuracy of the SLOSH model is advertised as +/- 20%. It provides 2 sets of images:
- “Maximum Water Depth“ – water depth at each grid cell of the SLOSH domain. Thus if inland at elevation of 10ft > MSL, and combined storm surge and tide ( “storm tide”) is 15ft at your location, then the water depth image will show 5ft of inundation.
- “Maximum Storm Tide“ – how high above mean sea level the sum of the storm surge plus the tide reaches.
- Over the ocean, the storm tide and water depth images will show the same values.
- Images are generated for high tide, thus showing worst-case inundation scenarios for mid-strength hurricanes of each Saffir-Simpson Category (1- 5).
However, the US National Hurricane Center no longer includes storm surges and flooding for hurricane categories stating that people are not acting upon warnings. In part, this may be a result of past discrepancies that have occured between forecasted and actual. For example, Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, had winds of 96-110 mph, and a storm surge of 3.5 – 6.8m. The forecasted storm surge was of a Category 5 storm i.e. winds greater than 155 mph. A Category 2 hurricane, on the Saffir-Simpson scale, has a storm surge of 6 to 8 feet. (1.8 to 2.8m)