Examining Wave Attenuation Devices

We're talking Wave Attenuation Devices with Fred Dorr today.

Remember, I'm a sportswriter by trade. My entire expertise on the matter we're discussing today boils down to:

1) I grew up on a beach

2) The house was on a seawall

3) I therefore have a base knowledge of waves-crashing-off-walls

4) Even with no scientific/academic training, I have more experience watching waves hit walls than many people who are authorities on the matter.

It's all downhill from there. My science is awful. I taught Science one year, and the highlight there was when I let the kids handle liquid mercury. I had to throw out and then acquire new versions of 10 school desks.

I mention all this because I'm interviewing someone who works in a field that may spark some interest among coastal residents. This is why I am, from this point on, stealing text wholesale from his website.

Also, I conducted the interview via email. It saves me from taping phone calls like a divorcing couple, and it lets Mr. Dorr speak directly to you, in a sense.

This is also why I am not challenging any of his answers. I'm just showing you some new technology, and you can decide if it will work on Duxbury/Humarock/First Cliff/Horse Neck/Scusset Beach for yourselves.

What is a WAD?

A WAD (Wave Attenuation Device) is a three sided, hollow, concrete pyramid with holes on all three sides and one on the flat top.

WADs do not come in any one size. They are designed according to the conditions at a shoreline site. If, as in the case of Scituate, "they " wanted to deploy WADs at Minot beach, Peggotty, and Humarock, then quite likely there would be three different designs and perhaps three different sizes.

The design and size depend on the conditions at the deployment site. These conditions include ocean bottom, tide heights, astronomical tide heights, storm surges, weather direction, wind speed, storm intensities/frequencies and other factors.

Scituate

The Science of a WAD:

WADs do two things.

First they knock a high wave down to virtually smooth water.

The second thing they do is to remove energy from an ocean swell. They do this much the same way that the aerator on your sink faucet does. If you didn't have that aerator on the faucet the water would come out in a big blast. The aerator only allows the water in the pipe to get to your sink via very small holes. Therefore each of the water streams contains very little energy.

On the ocean side of a WAD array, the turbulent oceanic swells have picked up some sand and carry it in suspension through the WADs.

However, because the WADs reduce the energy of the wave, the sand falls out of suspension and settles on an eroded beach. If there is sand available in the near ocean, if we have a few nor'easter and if we had an array of WADs, we could over a short period of time (1-3 years) have a new dry high tide beach.


Seafood Farming?

In the background are fish havens they resemble WADs except they do not have a flat top or a hole in it.

They are mass produced in three sizes.

They are deployed in small arrays; circles, squares, triangles, etc. They attract fish and promote organic marine growth.

From what I have read they are very effective in increasing a fisherman's catch.

Q)  What makes the WADs better than a conventional Massachusetts seawall (like the Duxbury Beach one in the picture above)?

That's a short question that has a long answer.
1.  Waves under cut the sandy edge  (TOE) of a seawall
2.  WADs knock down high/tall waves to calm water.  When I asked Scott Bartkowski if WADs could knock down a 20 foot wave his reply was we have killed 29 foot waves.
3.  If there is sand available in the near shore up to 300-500 feet then during storms that sand, with the help of WADs, will migrate to the eroded beach and replenish it.
4.  When a beach gets fully replenished, the waves will not reach the seawall.  If a wave cannot reach a seawall there can be no damage to shoreline structures.

Sandwich, MA

Q) How do the WADs not get filled up with sand and stone? Would they be more, less or equally effective when filled or partially-filled with sand and stone?

In the course of doing their work the WADs do not get filled up instead they break the wave energy down into little pieces so to speak and the sand actually moves through the WADs.  If one snap shot were taken of the entire process then you would say that the WADs were filled up with sand.  Go to WADs Work 4 Beaches on face book and look at the video I have posted you will see what I mean.
When a beach is fully replenished then the municipality should get a barge and a crane go out into the sea and move the WADs farther out  and make a larger beach.


What sort of impact-force testing did you do on the WADs, i.e. waves picking up Ottoman-sized boulders (see "Bert's, Plymouth") and throwing them off WADs?

1. When Living Shoreline Solutions does their scientific investigation, they look at what's on the ocean floor, ferocity of storms. storm surge, astronomical tide effect, beach slope and a myriad of other parameters. They design four applicable WADs for a specific beach that will do the job of attenuating "its" waves.   If there are rocks on the ocean floor then the thickness of the wall of the hollow WAD is increased.  Understand that the concrete used is marine grade and reinforced with fiberglass shreds.  As regards to the event at Bert's   I guess my only answer to that is Poo happens.

Ocean Bluff/Brant Rock

Would fish swim into the holes during high tides, get trapped there when the tide went out, and then stink like stank on a hot summer day?  Can you put fish-filters over the holes and not diminish the effectiveness of the WAD?   

There is no need for keep the fish out of the WADs.  The WADS are hollow.  Fish can swim in and out of WADs.  In the gulf coast  LSS makes a series of Fish Havens for commercial fishermen.  They have reported significant increase in their harvest due to the effectiveness of WADS.  WADs are also used to promote oyster growth.


Do you put these WADs where conventional seawalls stand in relation to the high tides, or do they go offshore some?

Duxbury Beach

Generally the WADs are put in the water perhaps fifty to 100 feet beyond the low tide line.  Exactly where depends on a number of factors that are determined by LSS's scientific investigation and the needs of the client.


Is it possible to perform patchwork repairs on WADs somehow?

I am not sure I know what you mean by patchwork repairs.  If you mean to repair a WAD that has been damaged.  I do not know the answer because there have not been any cases of WAD failure in seventeen years.  Caution must be used because the primary market for WADs is in the south and the Caribbean, where there are no rocks.  If you mean can short (25-100 feet) arrays of WADs be put in place.  The answer is yes but the  overall project must contain several arrays because of a cost/profit problem.


This might be silliest question you've ever been asked in this field, but could a town order WADs in different colors if they so desired?

No it is not the silliest but it comes close.  There have been WADs built with rocks imbedded on the top to simulate a nearby breakwater.  I suppose if someone wanted a puse colored WAD array that could be done--at a price of course.

Green Harbor

Do you take any barnacle-prevention measures?  

WADs have three purposes--Attenuate waves, replenish beaches, and provide marine habitat.  I guess that means that if barnacles are going to grow on a WAD the people will have to deal with it.


Do WADs work if the water level gets higher than them?

Extraordinary question.  A swell is essentially rotating water much like a basket ball rolling across a gym floor.  If the bottom of a swell collides with the ocean bottom the swell turns into a breaker.  When a wave breaks it begins to lose its kinetic energy.   Wave height is measured from the bottom of the trough to the top of the swell

Kingston

If an array of WADs is in 12 feet of water and a swell of 13 feet comes by, the bottom of the swell will hit the top of the WAD causing the swell to begin to break.  If the ocean bottom on the beach side of the WAD is less than 13 feet then the swell will really break and lose all its energy.

In the process of losing its energy any sand that was in suspension will be deposited on the beach.  That is like trying to stir a glass of iced tea with five teaspoons of sugar in it.   As long as the tea is being stirred the sugar will stay in suspension.  But, when the stirring is stopped the excess sugar will settle to the bottom of the glass.   That is how a beach is replenished.


What sort of aquaculture can someone perform with a WAD? 

 I know that oysters grow very well on WADs,  I have seen pictures of fish in and around WADs.  In fact two hours after a WAD array was deployed at Negril Jamaica on a barren ocean bottom there were fish "sniffing" around looking for a good place to stay for the night!  I suspect that WADs would make a good hidey place for lobsters


How large of a wave would be required to move a WAD?

The actual answer is no body knows.  In the seventeen years that WADs have been deployed all over the world not one has ever been moved from the place it was deployed.  That is because of its design.  Hollow: water goes through a WAD.  A WAD has slanted sides.  A WAD is a three sided pyramid.  So the water goes up, and through WAD, and can't push it around.

Nantasket Beach

How tall do you make the tallest of your WADs?

All WADs are site specific.  For instance in Scituate, my town.  If the town were to WAD North Scituate Beach, Peggotty and Humarock there would likely be three different designs.  So far WADs have been as short as four feet and as tall as 12 feet.  They have weighed as little as 450 lbs to as much as 21,000 lbs.  I asked Ping Wang PHD University of South Florida who has done some Attenuation testing for Living Shorelines, the following question, "Could a WAD be designed to replenish a beach and at the same time prevent any shoreline damage regardless of the height of the waves.  His very short answer was "YES".


Is one mile of conventional Massachusetts seawall more or less expensive than the same distance of WADs?

Brant Rock/Ocean Bluff

Another fabulous question.  Scituate is or will be building a seawall 700 feet long.  It is expected to cost about $4,000,000 That works out to about $5700 per linear foot.  I have to stop for a moment here.  A seawall is necessary to keep calm high water from flooding the local area.  The concerns of sea level rise can be accommodated with a seawall.  But an array of WADS attenuate the waves.  On the ocean side there might be 12 foot waves.  On the shore side of the WAD deployment the waves might be 6 inches high  The current cost of a double row deployment of WADs is approximately $1,000 per linear foot.  I think that equates to an 80% saving.



Is it possible to buy WADs for personal use like forming a semi-circle in front of your house?

s soon as you said the word "possible" the answer is yes.  BUT you would have to ship them from Florida.  You would not have a choice in shape, because they do not manufacture them in a factory and then ship them from a stock pile.  Living Shoreline Solutions designs a site specific WAD, fabricates the concrete molds in Florida then ships the forms to the site.  Once here local labor assembles the forms and a local concrete company provides the concrete.  Then someone either has to hire a barge with a crane or a very big front end loader to deploy the finished product..  In addition the state owns the water, you would have to get their permission.  From what I understand that takes at least a year.

 I have enclosed two files, which are pictures that I plan to use in the article. One picture is of a seawall in Duxbury, which is what I have in mind when I say "conventional Massachusetts seawall." The other is of the White Cliffs Country Club in the Cedarville section of Plymouth. What could WADs do to stop erosion of those sand cliffs?

I have not yet seen your pix but I know that when it comes to cliff erosion, although WADS have not been used in that particular situation.  I have to add here that no WADs have ever been deployed in the waters of Massachusetts.  I have about 20 years left on this good earth and I intend to use every one of them to get WADs into Massachusetts waters.

Back to your query.  Put WADS in the water the scientifically prescribed distance from the toe of the cliff and if there is sand in the near shore then that sand will be transported to the space between the WADs and the toe of the cliff over some reasonable short period of time.  Perhaps 1-3 years.  In that time the beach level will rise above the height of the WADs and the waves will not reach the toe of the cliff.  If the waves cannot reach the shoreline there can be no further erosion except by the rain.

Again go to WADs Work 4 Beaches in face book look at the five videos for proof that they work.

Hunting For Sea Glass In Massachusetts

Who doesn't love Sea Glass?

Sea Glass is made when regular glass gets into the ocean. While finding a whole bottle may be preferable, one generally works with shards of broken glass. They wash into the sea, bang around for a few decades, and gradually 1) get the edges rounded off, and 2) acquire a frosted appearance.

Voila! Sea Glass!

The hunter/gatherer of Sea Glass is someone who finds use for a Cape Cod beach in February. Other than aesthetics, beaches aren't really good for much between October and May. You can surf, but that requires the acquisition of a skill, a wetsuit and a car big enough to carry a surfboard. Even then, you have to wait for days where the waves are large, and- even more then- a shark might eat you. Funk that.

You can still saddle up a surfboard, but you can also walk along the shore for free and keep your eyes looking down. You'll eventually gather up a nice pile of colored, frosted glass, which can be used for various artistic projects.

Don't be intimidated by Artistry. I'm pretty much a complete moron with Art (when I was starting out as a teacher, the inescapable chalkboard artwork which I had to perform was of such a low level that one of my students- her name was something like Hillary Aronson, in case you know her- came up to me after a class and said "Mr. B, next time, just tell me what you want drawn on the board and I'll get up and do it for you. Art isn't your strong point."), but even I can buy a jar and put Sea Glass in it. Leave the jar on a windowsill where it can catch some sunlight... boom, Art.

The hunt can be as nice as the meal with Sea Glass, as- even if you strike out- you still get in a nice beach walk. Other than a greatly-increased risk of toe-stubbing, there's really no downside to Sea Glass Collecting.

This is stuff that you probably knew before reading this article, so what I need to do is some lengthy thinkin' on how sea glass is made, and where someone would be best sent to gather some.

As we noted before, the short answer to the How Is Sea Glass Made question is "glass falls in the ocean, et cetera." However, there are a few things that you should know beyond that.

One, there is some snobbery in the game. "Beach Glass" sounds just like sea glass, but it is not the same, and people will clown on you if you think that it is. Beach Glass is either made in rivers or- for the love of Mary- factories. This stuff is the Fat Girl/Poor Man of the artsy glass movement, and a resident of (or a resident with access to) coastal Massachusetts need not worry about it.

Two, sea glass takes 20-30 years to round into shape. You can't smash a bottle today, walk down the beach a few hundred yards tomorrow, and find a frosted version of the bottle you broke. Nope. You have to wait, for decades in some cases. Certain kinds of sea glass (I'm not sure what kinds, I'm assuming thick glass or something) take up to 50 years before they're display-worthy.

In the 1980s or so, they passed numerous Bottle Bill laws, and those empties are worth a nickel each now... nothing to sneeze at when you drink to the degree that I drink, player. People started returning bottles rather than chucking them, and poor folks would eventually gather up any leftover cold-soldiers to make a nickel per. Right around the same time, those tree-huggin' liberals forced many industries to move away from glass bottles towards the non-sea-glass-makin' plastic bottling. While the beer companies held out, even the drinkers picked up some love-thy-planet stuff from the more conscientious people, and are presently less likely to smash bottles when drinking outdoors.

All of the stuff in the previous two paragraphs means that there is less glass being dumped in the ocean, which means that the sea glass talent pool has thinned out substantially. Population growth cancels it out somewhat, but not nearly enough. The person saying "There was more and better seaglass when I was a kid," is correct, not fooled by nostalgia.

Three, the motion of the ocean is important not only for making the glass, but for moving it about. If glass stayed where you broke it, my local pharmacy would have no Noxema, and I'd have a lamp full of cool blue sea glass culled from my just-offshore stash spot. If you're serious about collecting sea glass- and your author is, at least this morning- you have to research where the currents run, where the rivers empty, where the population centers are, seabed sediment redistribution... and numerous other factors, trust me.

Fourth, know that one piece of glass is not of the same value as others. Typical colors include white, brown and green, the colors of the beer and soda bottles. Lesser-known colors include yellow and blue. Experts can look at a piece of glass and tell you what kind of bottle it came from, and from which era.

Basically, clear = beer, faint green = Coca-Cola, darker green = Sprite, and blue means that not only did someone drink Milk Of Magnesia at a beach, but that they enjoyed it so much that they smashed the bottle in celebration when they finished, like Gronk.

Fifth, you need a combination of timing and luck. Sea glass doesn't weigh much, but it weighs a lot more than sand does. Sand washes around more, and eventually will cover up sea glass. There are some tricks you can do to up your odds, but "needle in a haystack" is actually too conservative a measure for what a glass hunter is doing.

If you can go hunting after a storm, do so. Everything gets turned over, and new stuff is cast forth from the sea.

Finally, much like a mating leopard, you have to pick your spots. Location is everything. You need to identify and exploit certain natural features which are distinct to the local geography. That's where we're headed now.

I was just kidding about Gronk smashing Vap-O-Rub bottles at the beach. Most of our sea glass comes from inland flooding. Rivers rise up, find bottles, wash them downstream, smash them up a bit, and send them out of their mouth into open ocean. The lucky pieces make it back to the beach. The coastal people smash bottles too, but their numbers don't match up with everyone inland.

So, your search should start with a river mouth that empties into Cape Cod Bay or the open Atlantic. The North River, the Taunton River, the the Charles River, the Mystic River, the Green Harbor River, and even the Hudson River will spit out glass that you can eventually collect. Glass can wash a long way from where it started.

Once you have that part done, you have to look at currents. Currents wash the glass to wherever it is going to end up... well, currents and waves, of course. You need to imagine the glass washing into the sea and being directed somewhere by the local currents... currents which, thanks to this handy map, you are now familiar with.

So, you have a glass source, the general direction from the source where the glass went, and now you need to guess where it ended up. This is where I have to invent a geographical term. A "basin beach" is something that sticks out into the sea a bit and collects whatever floatsam and jetsam the sea has to offer. Think of the basin beach as being a big first baseman's mitt, working the current.

Once you're on that beach, look for the area where everything washes up. If a beach has a sandy part and a rocky part, go to the rocky part. Work the fringes of the pile, or go All In and start digging in the rockpile itself.

I actually suck at the collecting, myself. I'm a tall man, and I have terrible eyesight. That's a bad combo to call in on a job where you are looking for tiny bits of glass on a beach, and that's before you factor in the ADHD and the often copious drug usage. What I am good for is helping you skip some of those steps I listed by pointing out local beaches which fit the criteria for a sea glass hot-spot.

Horse Neck Beach, Westport

The Gulf Stream current pushes right up into the body of water known as Buzzards Bay. America's east coast most certainly coughs up a lot of sea glass. Most of it goes out to sea, some of it ends up on Lon-Guy-Land, Rhodey takes her share, but that still leaves a lot of Niceness washing into Bee Bay.

Horse Neck Beach (do not buy into rumors that it was named that because a harlot was lynched there) is well-positioned to get a cut of that action. I suppose that a lot of New York glass washes over here, which should help your numbers out some with ol' Lady Luck.

HNB is also close enough and yet far enough to/from the Taunton River to guarantee a nice flow of glass.

More glass probably goes to the Elizabeth Islands, but mining that involves you getting a boat and stuff. Remember, you're putting broken glass in a jar... let's not ring up any silly expenses.

Speaking of which, the two best spots to capitalize on the Gulf Stream current- Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard- are also eliminated for needs-a-boat reasons.



Old Silver Beach, Falmouth MA

On the other side of Buzzards Bay, we have the town of Falmouth. In the town of Falmouth, we have Old Silver Beach.

I like more rocks on a beach when I hunt, but OSB is very well positioned to get washashore sea glass. If you can get up by Crow Point, do so. It's rockier there.

You may end up in someone's front yard, so be careful. I grew up on a beach and live on one now, so I tend to be a bit unaware of beach restrictions in other towns.

If you find some silver there, even better. Just don't be, like, taking it out of people's beach houses or anything, friends.


Craigville Beach, Centerville MA

Cape Cod, which is a barrier beach for Massachusetts, is also protected by a pair of barrier islands known as Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, as well as the Elizabeth Islands. These islands, and the multitude of jetties and groynes along the coast (Dennis Port has so many groynes and jetties along the shoreline, it looks like a zipper when viewed from space) interfere with the glass gathering process.

The islands, at a sharp corner of the Gulf Stream, also have odd currents. They sink ships, which is why they dug the Cape Cod Canal. It also messes with the sea glass distribution.

Even if they don't stop the flow of sea glass entirely, the process becomes somewhat unpredictable. We'll give you a southern Cape location to check, but don't say that we didn't warn you.

Craigville sits in a gap between Martha and ACK, and is a nice base from which to operate. She is also basin-shaped, which should act like a catcher's mitt and trap seaglass.

Remember, since you aren't too far from the Kennedy Compound, you might get some high-pedigree glass. I know a guy who lives near Chappaquidick who claims to have red sea glass from Ted Kennedy's brake lights.

Friggin' sweet stopper!

Coast Guard Beach, Eastham, MA

Cape Cod is several different beasts as far as sea glass collecting goes. Buzzards Bay is well-positioned, while the south-facing Cape isn't. Once you turn the corner at Chatham, however, it's a whole new ball game.

I like east-facing Atlantic beaches. A very determined piece of European or African sea glass may have fought her way to America against the Gulf Stream. Who knows? It may have once been Queen Isabella's compact, or Napoleon's Courvoisier bottle, or John Bonham's headlights, or Idi Amin's coke mirror. You never know, stuff like that gets tossed around all the time.

Park and walk north (left) once you hit the beach, to get yourself past the sandbars.


Race Point, Provincetown, MA

RP is one of those gold mine spots. She's also the first beach on our list that isn't getting Gulf Stream in her mix. Most of her sea glass is coming from the north.

People who study currents are already saying "By George! The West Maine Coastal Current aims right at Race Point!" You can't sneak anything up on those people. RP gets stuff from Maine and New Hampshire all the time, including sea glass.Throw in whatever Boston glass washes out that far, and you have a hot spot.

Stellwagen Bank also channels stuff towards Race Point. Note that the Bank, and Cape Cod to a greater extent, slow down waves. This slows down sea glass migration.



Skaket Beach, Orleans, MA

I knew that my kung-fu was superb when my research on which beaches to hit led to a list which matched up with the Sea Glass Ninja Lady from Cape Cast. She admitted that she had no idea why one beach or another yielded better results, but our conclusions match up well.

Inner Cape Cod Bay is a tremendous place to go. It acts as a catch basin for the runoff from the Western Maine Coastal Current. This current is the engine that drives Cape Cod Bay's sea glass movement. Water is pushed along the shore from Maine, past Boston, and into Cape Cod Bay. The fish-hook shape of Cape Cod helps catch the glass as it moves down the line.

Sandy Neck Beach, Barnstable MA

Sandy Neck Beach is a rather long beach, so if you strike out here, you might want to look for easier-spotted things as your next hobby. I'd recommend Lighthouses, it's tough to miss those.

Sandy Neck Beach is a 4700 acre barrier beach, and she is what everything that washes down from Boston eventually bumps into.

You can double up on Sandy Neck Beach. It's where the sand that washes down from Sandwich ends up. Added bonus... when they dredge the Canal, they dump the fill on a beach just west of SNB, and it washes East during storms. Go to Sandy Neck after a full-moon storm, you'll get a lot of Sandwich's sea glass as well.


Scusset Beach, Sandwich MA

The South Shore ends with a THUD as you hit the Scusset Beach jetty. They made the jetty to protect the Canal, but they may as well have made it to catch sea glass.

If Sandwich is being robbed of sea glass, that means someone else is getting extra! Ironically as Hell, I think that this was Mr. Glass' motivation in Unbreakable.

If you want to throw some sand over the jetty towards Sandwich, they'd appreciate it.

Manomet Point, Plymouth MA

P-Diddy is somewhat sheltered by Duxbury Beach, and Manomet Point is the part of Plymouth that sticks out the most into the sea. If you follow the current down the South Shore, MP is what you'll eventually run into.

You're not too far downstream from an oceanfront nuclear reactor here, which in theory would make it possible to look for glowing, irradiated sea glass at night.

If you want to be up the river from the plutonium, try the perfect-for-the-job Long Beach part of town.


Duxbury Beach, Duxbury MA

Duxbury Beach is pretty much the exact shape of the Western Maine Coastal Current, and the current repays the favor by giving Duxbury 5 miles of sea glass hunting territory. Nothing on the South Shore sticks further out into the current than Duxbury Beach does.

You get another 5 miles on the bayside, but the big scores are on the oceanside.

Once you commit, you may as well walk down to the uninhabited part. Less people have worked the territory, upping your chances of scoring big.

If you feel really ambitious, dig into one of the huge rockpiles around the crossovers The good stuff is under the rockpile.

Since I am a former Mayor of Duxbury Beach, you have to give me 10% of your haul, or half of any blue glass.

Egypt Beach, Scituate MA

You'll feel like King Tut after you pillage Egypt Beach, wocka wocka wocka...

Scituate has several beach styles, including rocky, sandy, and marshy. Egypt Beach is what Goldilocks would settle on after dissing the other beaches in town for one sea glass-huntin' reason or another.

You can dig in the rockpiles, or you can walk along the perimeter and pick off the strays. It's Scituariffic!



Nantasket Beach, Hull MA

We saved the best for last!

Nantasket represents two things here. She is the end of the South Shore gold mine, and she is where the WMCC loses her power. That's the bad news. Everything else is good news.

Nanny may hold the title for the region, as she is perfectly positioned to get Boston's glass. She also gets the inland glass, when the Charles and Mystic Rivers spit their bounty out into the sea.

Point Allerton is probably a better spot, but Nantasket is more accessible. The area around the high school is productive, as well.

Much love to Julie Nightingale for the sea glass pics. Sara Flynn gave us the Duxbury Beach shot with the stairs. Jessica Allen was nice enough to shoot Hull for us.

Come Hull or High Water: One Hull Of A Hurricane Preparation Article

"If I owned Hull and Texas, I would live in Hull and rent out Texas."

Hull sticks way out into the ocean, which is never a good thing in a coastal flooding scenario. It is very low-lying in spots, also a bad. It is also very densely populated, which complicates things further.

That map above is a Hurricane Inundation Map, from FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and NHC. The analysis is by ME, a lowly NWS volunteer spotter who happens to be Boss Hogg here at Cranberry County Magazine. The map is based on the zany-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge inundation.

"Storm surge" is the water pushed onshore in a storm. If you're standing at the high tide mark and a ten foot storm surge comes ashore, you'll be under ten feet of water. You can call it a Deathflow or Liquid Doom if it gets your people moving more quickly.

These maps depict the estimated storm surge for Hull in the event of a direct-hit hurricane arriving at mean high tide. They also show what sort of storm would e required to flood certain areas. They do not depict freshwater inundation that could result from heavy rain, sewer backups, and river/stream overflow.

The maps work like this:

Light Green = Category 1 storm. The Halloween Gale is a good-although-offshore example of a Category 1 hurricane, while the Blizzard of '78, though not a hurricane, is also a good model for estimating this sort of damage/risk.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was a weak Category 2 hurricane. Yes, "weak" and "Category 2 hurricane" are funny words to string together.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We have only had five Category 3 hurricanes since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the last one being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Red = Category 4 storm. We've had one in recorded history, in 1635.

Flesh = 100 Year FEMA Flood Estimates. This is the "hundred year storm" you hear people speak of, although you have to go pre-Colombian to find evidence (marsh mud samples are analyzed for otherwise unexplainable sand layering to determine prehistoric hurricane histories for areas with dunes in front of marshes) of storms of this power striking New England. According to my research, we got tuned up on to this extent in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

As we were saying before, you people are in a Hull of a spot.

"We're surrounded!" "We're supposed to be surrounded, we're paratroopers Hull."

Yes, you are surrounded... by water, and you don't live on mountains. When the water rises, it likes to come and visit coastal communities. That is going to make things very sketchy in H-you-double hockey sticks.

Hull could go from peninsula to island very quickly if a hurricane came to town. These maps help give you an idea of what sort of risk you face.

Hull does catch a break, in that a hurricane is almost never going to land a direct hit on Hull. It will come ashore on the South Coast, Cape Cod or Rhode Island before reaching Hull, and that will blunt the effects somewhat.

Hull will also benefit from the fact that hurricanes historically have a tendency to right-hook just before hitting Cape Cod, thus keeping Chatham and Wellfleet between the hurricane and Hull. That effect is erased when the storm plows through Cape Cod Bay, of course.

You can analyze the map for yourself, although I do feel obliged to note that Hull High will be underwater in even minor storms. The roads out will be blocked as well.

Talk to old-timers who were on Hull for Hurricane Carol or even the 1938 hurricane. Locals know stuff that FEMA doesn't, as odd as that sounds. I disagree with FEMA on my own neighborhood (Duxbury Beach), and my hurricane pedigree only runs back to Hurricane Belle. Keepers of the Old School actually watched hurricanes hit Hull, something most FEMA kids can't say.

Hull does have some high ground (World's End is safe from most storms, I was somewhat disappointed to discover), and you should both 1) know where it is and 2) befriend people who live on it.

We can now move on to the Evacuation Map.

"Oh Baby, Please Don't Leave Me!"

This one is easier to read. Red means "They'd better leave," and Yellow means "You'd better leave, too."

Hull, in a hurricane, is a French word for "Flee." Pretty much everyone in town should give serious thought to a good Skedaddle. A good run is better than a bad stand. That water will be coming ashore angry.

You don't HAVE to go. However, the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm will also be the one who may have to pull you out of the floodwaters, so use your best discretion and stuff.

Hull will be a nightmare to evacuate. As anyone who drives home from a bar knows, there's really only one road out. Hull also enjoys the distinction of being the 4th smallest town by land area in the state, yet having one of the longer coastlines... while also being top 30 in population density.

Also note that you can be killed by a hurricane very far back from shore, even in areas not demarcated by either map. A river could overflow, power lines could fall, the winds could decapitate you with a pizza box, and you could very easily end up in a sharknado.

We want you alive. We want you alive for monetary reasons, as this site depends on you dropping by now and then. We want you alive for reasons of professional pride, i.e. "If they listened to me, they got out in time." We also want you alive for regular, nice-people reasons.

"I advocate hanging on as long as possible."

Check out MEMA Hurricane Inundation Maps for yourself... laugh at those less fortunate than yourself, while planning defense strategies for people trying to get into your house to seek refuge.