Al's Morning Meeting

SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) is a computerized model run by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) to estimate storm surge heights and winds resulting from historical, hypothetical, or predicted hurricanes by taking into account:

• Pressure Size
• Forward speed
• Track
• Winds

Opal 1995
Hurricane Opal made landfall near Pensacola Beach, Fla., as a Category 3 hurricane. The storm caused extensive storm surge damage from Pensacola Beach to Mexico Beach (a span of 120 miles) with a maximum storm tide of 24 feet, recorded near Fort Walton Beach. Damage estimates for Opal were near $3 billion.

Hugo 1989
Devastated the West Indies and the Southeastern United States, including South Carolina cities Charleston and Myrtle Beach. Hugo was responsible for 60 deaths and $7 billion in damages, with a storm surge estimated at 19.8 feet at Romain Retreat, S.C.

Camille 1969
A Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful on the Saffir/Simpson Scale with maximum winds of more than 200 mph devastated the Mississippi coast. The final death count for the U.S. is listed at 256. This includes 143 on the Gulf Coast and another 113 from the Virginia floods.

Audrey 1957
There were 390 deaths as the result of a storm surge in excess of 12 feet, which inundated the flat coast of southwestern Louisiana as far as 25 miles inland in some places.

New England 1938
A fast-moving Category 3 hurricane (the Long Island Express) that struck Long Island and New England with little warning on Sept. 21. A storm surge of 10 to 12 feet inundated the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, southeastern Massachusetts, and Long Island, N.Y., especially in Narragansett Bay and Buzzards Bay. Six hundred people died due to the storm.

Okeechobee 1928
A Category 4 hurricane that made landfall near Palm Beach on Sept. 16 with a central pressure of 929 mb. The center passed near Lake Okeechobee, causing the lake to overflow its banks and inundate the surrounding area to a depth of 6 to 9 feet; 1,836 people died in Florida, primarily due to the lake surge.

Galveston 1900
More than 6,000 people died when hurricane storm tides (the surge plus the astronomical tide) of 8-15 feet inundated the entire island city of Galveston, Texas.

On Sept. 8, 1900, the greatest natural disaster to ever strike the United States occurred at Galveston, Texas. In the early evening hours of Sept. 8, a hurricane came ashore at Galveston bringing with it a great storm surge that inundated most of Galveston Island and the city of Galveston. As a result, much of the city was destroyed and at least 6,000 people were killed in a few hours time.