A number of sources have mentioned that there may be coastal flooding in the Mid Atlantic, namely the great state of Delaware. Since, I have a bunch of data about roads flooding in Delaware, I will try to estimate about how many road flooding incidents we will have.
To start out let us compare the four highest tide events at Lewes Delaware in the last 3 years:
| Event | Road Flooding reports | Max Tide (ft above MSL) at Lewes |
Precipitation (inches) at Dover |
| Sandy | 63 | 6.46 | 3.17 |
| Irene | 41 | 5.74 | 5.55 |
| 10/29/2011 | 13 | 5.45 | 1.54 |
| 6/4/2012 | 0 | 5.07 | 0.59 |
| SATURN | ??? | fcst - abt 5.9 | Snow / 4? |
So, some of the best comparisons are Sandy and Irene. While these have very similar tides, this storm is very different because it probably won't bring a lot of rain, but instead brings snow. I haven't gone through the data enough to figure out which roads are flooding based on rainfall, which flood from tide/storm surge and which are driven by the combination of the two. Anyway, for now I won't make a forecast. But, I think the data above should give you an idea. Make your own forecast and put it in the comments if you want!
For more information:
See the tide forecast
Read the Wunderblog
Read the coastal flooding warning
Try out wundermap (confession, I'm becoming a weather underground fan, despite the whole domestic terrorism thing)
Get the Tide Data
Get Precipitation Data
As things progress, we can see who has the best forecast by watching for flooding alerts in DelDOT's real time alerts and watching the flooding via DelDOT's many webcams (be sure to check the Prime hook road webcams, it is practically guaranteed to flood).
