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 National Hurricane Center’s potential storm surge flooding map boundary displayed in nowCOAST for the Galveston Bay, Texas, area.
NOAA's nowCOAST®, a GIS-based online web mapping service that provides frequently updated weather and ocean observations along with coastal and marine weather warnings and forecasts, now provides access to the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) potential storm surge flooding map. The NHC map is intended to depict the risk associated with coastal storm surge flooding resulting from tropical cyclones. The map can help improve as community’s response to tropical cyclones by providing the user with an understanding of the depth and inland reach potential of storm surge flooding. It was developed by NOAA over the course of several years in consultation with social scientists, emergency managers, broadcast meteorologists, and others. “The incorporation of the NHC map in nowCOAST will allow users, such as emergency managers, to integrate this map with their own map layers such as coastal evacuation routes and critical infrastructure on client- or server-based Geographic Information Systems or other mapping applications” said Dr. Ed Myers of NOS/Coast Survey Development Lab. The nowCOAST map service will be updated approximately every 10 minutes to ensure the latest NHC map is provided to the user as soon as it becomes available. Once issued, the potential storm surge flooding map will be updated by NHC every 6 hours alongside each new NHC forecast advisory for the associated tropical cyclone. nowCOAST is an ArcGIS-based web mapping application developed by the Office of Coast Survey’s Coast Survey Development Laboratory and is hosted on NOAA’s 24 x7 high availability Integrated Dissemination Program IT infrastructure operated the NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction. This new nowCOAST map service is available from http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/nowcoast/wwa_meteocean_tropicalcyclones_inundation/MapServer Additional information about NHC’s Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map is available from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/PDD-PotentialStormSurgeFloodingMap.pdf Full press release available from: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/20160929_pa_NowCoast.pdf September 29, 2016 |