Storm overlay
Every storm aligned on its own peak, so you can compare shape and speed rather than calendar dates. Hour 0 is each storm's crest.
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Current forecast — not yet wired up.
Phase 3 will draw the live forecast here as a dashed line against these storms. It is deliberately absent
rather than mocked: see the limitations below for what forecast data is and isn't obtainable.
The numbers
Peak water level and peak surge are different moments. A storm can push a large surge onto a low tide and never reach a flood stage — which is luck, not safety.
| Storm | Peak water levelft MLLW | Peak surgeft above tide | When the water peaked | Gauge coverage |
|---|
+ marks a value the gauge never finished measuring — read it as "at least this high."
Known limitations
- Surge here is observed minus predicted tide. That residual folds in wave setup, rainfall runoff and any datum drift at the gauge, not storm surge alone.
- One gauge is not a town. Sandy Hook is the reference station for this stretch of coast, but water levels inside Sandy Hook Bay and up the creeks differ from the open-bay gauge.
- No forecast archive for Sandy or Irene. Stevens' published Irene and Sandy work is hindcast, not archived operational forecasts, and Sandy Hook is not among the stations in their public 2020 forecast archive. "Forecast vs. reality" can only ever cover recent storms.