There’s a lot of evidence that the future in coastal areas will look a lot like the past, only with more bad times. That once a century event might be more like once a decade by 2100. And brace for that “once a decade storm” — it may soon hit every few years.
If this assumption is correct, there’s a lot of value in knowing what conditions have been like in your community over past decades. (For example, if your community is considering developing a new area, it’s useful to know how often that area has flooded in the past.)
Unfortunately, finding this data can be harder than it ought to be. While it’s still harder than it ought to be, NOAA has made it much easier with their new Inundation Analysis Tool, which they officially released last week.
The tool allows you to access the data gathered by an array of gauges from around the country. There’s no small number. Here’s what the Gulf of Mexico’s offerings look like (each white dot is a gauge):
Once you select a gauge, it’ll allow you to select a span of time and a water depth relative to a defined reference point. For example, say you want to know how many times a particular gauge has been over 1.3 meters higher than it normally is: this is your tool.
The output varies from geeky to really geeky. This tool is NOT about pretty, ready for PowerPoint presentation pictures. You get:
- A data table
- A histogram showing frequency of occurrence relative to threshold elevation
- A histogram showing frequency of duration of inundation
- An X-Y scatter plot showing frequency of elevation versus duration of inundation for each event
I have no issue with the geeky factor of this: it’s not designed for the general public to entrain themselves. In fact, the primary use the site lists for their tool is for people working on marsh restoration (to help pick appropriate plants for various levels of saltwater tolerance). Still, the tool can be a little frustrating — you can’t, for example, easily tell how much data each gauge has available, meaning you might ask it to look at a period of time before it was installed. It would be better if the data available were displayed on the gauge’s main page instead of asking you to click to check. And each time you make a query it can’t do it resets the form so you have to reenter your desired dates and elevation.
Grumbling aside, this is a relatively easy way to access a lot of data that was buried too deeply for many of us to find. Here’s to hoping NOAA continues to develop and improve it.