Scituate Hurricane Special

The tropics are stirring up a bit, so why not drop the Hurricane Special for Scituate?

Scituate, like her neighbors in Duxbury and Marshfield, is more of a nor'easter town than a hurricane town. That's actually a worse fate in Massachusetts, as we don't get hurricanes all that much, and the ones we do get break on the South Coast or Rhode Island first.

That matters very little when the waves are breaking on your house, but it matters a lot with these maps we'll be looking at today.

The map above is a Hurricane Inundation Map. It is brought to you today by an amalgamation of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and NHC. It will be analyzed by ME, for U.

Inundation relates to storm surge, which is the water pushed ashore by a large storm like a hurricane. You can call it the Deathflood or Liquid Doom if that gets your people moving faster. Flooding is the big killer with hurricanes, and it would be an issue in Scituate.

You can use this map to determine what's what in your neighborhood when the flooding starts. It depicts a direct hit hurricane arriving at mean high tide. It does not depict freshwater flooding. They are developed by using the zany-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge inundation. They also show which intensity (on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale) of storm would be needed to soak a particular region.

A direct-hit hurricane would be near impossible for Scituate, as it would have to loop around the Cape and drop back in on you. It's not impossible, according to Bistromath, it's just highly improbable. What is more likely is a Category X storm hitting the South Coast, then moving into Cape Cod Bay to hit Sit Chew It with X-Y. If you see Category 1 for Scituate, you know that Fairhaven probably got Category 2.

Here's how the colors work on the Inundation Map above:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. The Blizzard of '78 and the Halloween Gale are good examples of Category 1 storm damage, although neither was directly a hurricane.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was a weak Category 2, and yes we do realize that "weak" and "Category 2 hurricane" are odd words to chain together.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five storms of this strength hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded history, in 1635.

Flesh = 100 Year FEMA Flood Zone. This is the "hundred year storm" you hear about, although you have to go pre-Colombian to find them. New England was hit by storms greater than Category 4 in roughly 1100 AD, 1300 AD and 1400 AD. They can tell by checking layers of sand on salt marsh muck.

Sorry about "flesh," my knowledge of colors was greatly dictated by the people at Crayola in the 1970s.

You can check these maps in far greater detail by going here and zooming a bit. It's disaster porn, styled to your very home!

Remember, you don't have to get flooded with seawater to die in a hurricane. You can get hit by lightning, sucked into a river, mashed in a road accident, have a tree fall on you, step on power lines, stumble into a sharknado or be killed by looters.

This leads to our second map, the Evacuation Map,

This is the map the authorities use when determining which neighborhoods will be evacuated. You don't HAVE to leave when the police tell you, but you also want to remember that the cop you were reading the Constitution to before the storm might very well be the one who has to make a decision as to whether or not to dive in to the maelstrom after you and your family.

I'm not chastising you. I watched the Halloween Gale from a waterfront home, with the police on a nearby hill blasting a searchlight on us the whole time.

Of course, that was a stupid move, so we'll work the other side now, and tell you about Beating Feet, Hightailing It, and Running Like A Scaled Dog.

This map is easier to follow. It has two colors:

Pink = They have to evacuate.

Yellow = You do, too.

Here's the map:

As you can see, Scituate is pretty much Get To Steppin' City if a storm is coming. She's low-lying, and is one of the first towns on the South Shore who get no barrier beach protection from Cape Cod. Much like how they vote in Chicago, Scituate will flood early and often.

Cranberry County Magazine is very much pro-Ask Old People Stuff. If you have some codger on your street who was here for Hurricane Carol, get a few drinks in him and pump him for storm information. Never let the Old School be an unutilized resource, player.

Grandpa may not work for FEMA, but FEMA most likely didn't have someone living on Oceanside Drive during Hurricane Donna. Find out what happened.

No one is going to tell you that Scituate is more dangerous than, say, Lynn.... but if the barometer drops, Scituate is about as bad as it gets. You want to have a rough idea of what danger your house faces, and you want to know if people who study weather for a living would evacuate if they owned your house.

Bone up on some local hurricane knowledge, oh people of Scituate!

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Cranberry County Magazine wants you alive for several reasons:

- I love showing non-Massachusetts people the written word "Scituate," and seeing if they can pronounce it properly. If Scituate gets wiped off the map, the default towns are Billerica, Gloucester, and Worcester.

- Professional Pride. "If they followed my advice, they're alive."

- Economics. Cranberry County Magazine can not afford to lose one person who opened this page, even if they did so by accident.

- Regular, nice people reasons.