Chatham Hurricane Special

Chatham is, if you view Cape Cod as a big fist being shaken towards Europe, the Elbow. Like any other elbow, it's gonna get banged off things now and then. In this case, instead of a table, its a Hurricane.

There are no imminent storms, Chatham is just next up to bat in our ongoing series.

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Chatham at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

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

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

Zoomed out... blurry, but anything unshaded is flooded....

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Barnstable Hurricane Information

Barnstable is in a position not unlike that which Germany faced in the World Wars. They have a two front battle going on if a hurricane arrives.

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Barnstable at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

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

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Notice that Route 28 washes out in a few spots.

It's a big town, we break the maps down a bit to make it easier for you

Egad! The Hyannis Port Compound could get soaked!

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Cover Your Assonet: A Freetown Hurricane Primer

Hurricane season is upon us, and we are nearing the peak of it.

Now, we're in Massachusetts, and we haven't been hit dead-on by a hurricane since the 1990s. That means both that we don't get them often, and it means that we are long overdue.

They aren't a frequent enough event that you should walk around wringing your hands or anything. However, there are certain things that a wise person might do which can eliminate a lot of the hand-wringing.

Ironically, the first step to a peaceful mind is to view some Disaster Porn!

We have two maps for you to look at, and they are specific to your town. One is for Inundation, and the other is for Evacuation. They pertain to a direct-hit hurricane hitting your town at mean high tide.

"Inundation" means "covered in water," although you can call it a Deathflood or a Sea Plague if that gets your people motivated. It refers to which areas in town will be covered with seawater (important distinction, these maps do NOT project freshwater flooding) if you play host to  hurricane. 

The map for Inundation (the top one) is color-coded, with light green, dark green, yellow and red. Those colors equate to which areas will get wet in what kind of storm, i.e. Category 1, 2, 3 and 4. Where you see colors changing on the map, that's where the experts think it will require a greater storm to flood that area in seawater.

The map for Evacuation (right) is less complicated. If you look at the Inundation map for a moment and then look at the Evacuation map, the logic will eventually make sense. The red areas of the map essentially say "Those People Have To Leave," and the yellow areas say "You Have To Leave, Too."

You'd think that saltwater flooding would be something Freetown people wouldn't have to worry about, but No.

Freetown has the ominously-named Three Mile River (never name a river or an island "Three Mile" or even "Eight Mile," for that matter) flowing up in her guts from Mount Hope Bay. The Taunton River also gets in on the saltwater redistribution action.

Those rivers are fine conductors of ocean water, should a large surge push ashore. This makes the village of Assonet very vulnerable. Assonet Bay Shores, which is already out in the water some, could become Atlantean in a bad enough storm.

It could also be tough to get to the Stop 'n' Shop Redistribution Center, so get that bread and milk early.

I kind of hung the + and - zoom thingy over Assonet in the shot at the bottom, my bad, folks.

The Commonwealth was good enough to supply us with a pile of maps for coastal communities. Here are the Inundation Maps for each town, and here are the Evacuation Maps. See how good you have it compared to your neighbors.

Freetown is a small town, although it covers a good sized area. Most of that area, and I mean like 98% of it, won't have to worry about ocean water. However, like the Mexican politician said when an American told him that the US "didn't take that much of Mexico,' a hurricane will take "the part with the roads."

Ocean water is only one small part of the danger associated with hurricanes. You don't ever have to see salt water to get high winds, flying debris, downed wires, freshwater flooding, lightning strikes, sewer overflow, tornadoes, looters, falling tree limbs... you know, the whole nine.

However small a town Freetown may be, you can be sure that it will cost more than 20 coats, some cookware, some cloth, some iron tools (supporters of a Wampanoag casino will be pleased to know that the purchase price of Freetown included "a dozen hoes") and a hatchet to rebuild Freetown.

Knowledge is power, so get a good look at these maps, see what the score looks like for your house, and have the bones of a plan in place by the time hurricane season gets on... which, unfortunately, is Now.

Wareham Hurricane Primer: Inundation And Evacuation

Wareham has a long and lengthy history with ol' Mister Hurricane. Just looking at that map above without knowing what it means, you can see that trouble would be afoot for ?ham if the barometer drops too much.

Wareham has taken beatings from Hurricane Bob, the Long Island Express, and a dozen other storms, and that's just in White Guy history. If you work in the native population, the numbers become countless after an eon or ten.

The 'Ham ( I really want to write a cop show for TV, base it in Onset, and call it "The 'Ham") suffers from the same problem which places like Bangladesh have.... it exists at the tip of a funnel. The funnel is formed by Buzzards Bay. That's the body-of-water Buzzards Bay, not the village part of Bourne... those people share the same Bangladeshian funnel problem that ?ham has.

Hurricanes, with both the wind and storm surge, push water ahead of them. That's actually what the storm surge is. It's not a problem in the middle of the Atlantic, but that water has to come ashore somewhere, and that somewhere is often at what they call the head of the bay. That's Wareham.

In fact, the "where" sound in Wareham may actually refer to "where the water goes." Water cares very little about washing over roads, cars, houses, people....  once it gets off the beach, we have a natural disaster on our hands.

You have two maps here, folks... the upper one shows Inundation, and the lower one shows Evacuation Zones. The maps are from June of 2014, and- to my knowledge- are the plan du jour.

"Inundation" is a nice, painless term that means "covered in water," but you can change it to "Deathflood" or "Sea Plague" if it gets the troops moving quicker.

They (these maps are produced by the National Hurricane Center) assume that Wareham gets a direct hit at high tide, and follow the (groan) SLOSH model of seawater redistribution that MEMA and others use. They are assuming worst case everything insofar as wind direction, phase of moon (check that, they use Mean High Tide), forward speed of the storm and everything else goes.

Those pretty colors are actually differing levels of devastation. I had a map/legend thingy in the Photobucket somewhere, but I'll just say that light green is a Category 1 storm, dark green is a Category 2, yellow is a Category 3, and red is a Category 4.

For a basis of comparison, what Wareham got from Hurricane Gloria may have been a weak Category 1 storm (she came ashore in Connecticut), the Blizzard of '78 was about a strong Category 1/weak Category 2, Hurricane Bob was  moderate Category 2 ("moderate" and "Category 2 hurricane" are kind of odd words to string together), old timers may have witnessed Hurricane Carol at Category 3, and The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was a strong Category 3 made worse (Blue Hills got a 186 mph wind gust) by her forward speed.

The colors show which sort of storm will inundate which areas. Light green means you are hurting in even a weak hurricane. Any shift in colors after light green means that the storm will have to kick it up a notch to reach that area. Red areas are places that will only suffer- but suffer they will- in a Category 4 storm, the likes of which hasn't been seen by White Men in these parts. Hurricane Bob was our 11th deadliest storm ever in Massachusetts, in case you were wondering where your memories rank all-time.

The lower map, Evacuation Zones, is a bit easier to follow. They have three zones of evacuation. The third zone is reserved for storms we don't get, because I never saw the third color, and I looked at 30 town maps. The other colors break down as red = They Have To Leave and yellow = You Have To Leave, Too.

If you stare at the top map a bit an then stare at the bottom map, you'll get the basic idea of the Hows and Whys.

This is a frightening amount of Inundation territory. Wareham is home to 21,000 people. Almost all of them would be underwater in this scenario. To make it worse, these maps only show part of the problem. There will be high winds, downed wires, falling tree limbs, river flooding, sewer overflow, road washouts... you know, the whole nine.

I can leave the worrying to you. It's my job to provide the maps and some insight. My work is done here. Godspeed.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Zone Maps