Hurricane & Extreme Storm Home Hurricane Bonnie Home Coastal Change From Lidar Explanation North Section Middle Section South Section Contact: Karen Morgan Related Links: » Coastal Lidar Mapping Project » Hurricane Fran

Choose a section from the map above to view the aerial photography and lidar maps for that location. Abstract Hurricane Bonnie struck the North Carolina coast on August 26, 1998. A category 3 storm packing winds of 115 mph (185 kph), Bonnie came ashore near Cape Fear, NC, close to the tracks of Hurricanes Bertha and Fran in the summer of 1996. One week after the storm, NASA, USGS, and NOAA surveyed the area of impact using the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), a scanning airborne laser altimeter. These data were compared to ATM data collected one year prior to Bonnie's landfall. Beach erosion and accretion create distinctive patterns in plots showing elevation changes between the two data sets. On relatively low areas of Topsail Island, NC, dunes were breached resulting in both sheet and channelized overwash. Overwash deposits 0.5-1.0 meters thick extended as much as 150 meters landward of the shoreline, in some areas extending under oceanfront houses and covering roads. On higher parts of Topsail Island, few significant impacts were observed. Although prior to landfall, Hurricane Bonnie was approximately the same strength as Hurricane Fran, Bonnie caused far fewer impacts to the barrier island environment. Using the ATM to acquire pre- and post-storm topography over hundreds of kilometers of coast greatly improves quantification of storm impacts.

Coastal and Marine Program > Center for Coastal Geology > Research by Theme > Hazards > Hurricane and Extreme Storm Impact Studies > Hurricane Bonnie > Coastal Change From Lidar