Coastal Services Center

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Pacific Northwest Pilot

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Preparing for Hazards

The Pacific Northwest is susceptible to strong winter storms with high winds and waves.  Coastal communities and residents, therefore, need to be prepared for how to handle these events.  The tools on this page will help communities and residents identify and asses risks and therefore better equip themselves for mitigating the storms' effects.

Ecological Assessment of Storm Impacts on Marine Resources
Local governments need tools and information to help them plan for the ecological impacts of storm events—including the impacts of human activities. A more accurate understanding of how toxic chemicals move through coastal ecosystems can improve the health of humans, salmon, and other natural resources. Through the Coastal Storms Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists will first evaluate how coastal storms mobilize contaminants into rivers, estuaries, and nearshore ecosystems and will then assess how these contaminants affect Pacific salmon and other at-risk fish species. The goal of the project is to provide new information that resource managers can use to mitigate the effects of nonpoint source stormwater pollution.

On-Line Coastal Inundation Tool
Recent studies conducted in the Pacific Northwest indicate the severity of major storms and their generated waves have been increasing for at least the past 25 to 50 years—with the underlying cause and possible connection to global climate change not fully understood. These events typically produce unusually high tides and the northward movement of beach sand within littoral cells, creating "hot spot" erosion sites. These studies also indicate that, in general, severe erosion conditions exist for several hours during a storm event with the magnitude of the erosion and coastal inundation being a function of the wave characteristics and tidal elevation.