CHESAPEAKE BAY STORM SURGE, SEICHES, AND FLOODING - Research Paper Example

s and light wind shear, the resilient southeasterly winds in the right-front quadrant of the storm forced water in Chesapeake Bay to move northward as a single layer, which eventually formed flooding and high sea levels in the northern region of the bay including Annapolis and Baltimore (Ming et al., 2006). Apparently, the hurricane traveled from northwest on an almost conventional line that had mysteriously emerged 3 days prior to the landfall and persisted to the eventual dissipation of the hurricane over the Great Lakes (Ming et al., 2006). After hurricane Isabel passed the west land side of Chesapeake Bay, the prevailing wind direction changed from northeasterly to southeasterly, and the land along the coast was inundated causing severe erosion in the bay (Gao & College of William and Mary, 2011).

In the bay, the utmost sustained wind reached 30.8 miles/second in Virginia with squalls that were as high as 43.7 miles/second, water levels reaching 5 feet over the average tidal echelons in Annapolis Maryland, a substantial increase in turbidity and salinity levels in the bay to approximately 10-4 psu/m (Ming et al., 2006). If Hurricane Isabel had approached the bay from the east side, the direction of the wind would have changed from northeasterly to northwesterly, thus causing melodramatic differences in the bay’s barotropic response.

In Washington, D.C., the largest surge reaching 2.7m over the ordinary high tides was created as a result of the arrangement of the long fetch of the lower Potomac River and southeasterly winds. The figure below portrays the storm surges and sea level distribution in Potomac River on 19th September, 2006 around 0400 hrs. At the same time, sea echelons in the arctic bay were rising speedily. From the figure, it is ostensible that the water was blown into the bay by Isabel’s strong southeast-to-southerly winds.

Moreover, moving at a speed of 1.5 ms-1, this water was dripped against the head of the bay. However, the high sea