Floodwaters overtook shoreline neighborhoods in New England as an intense storm gained strength and swept northward Sunday. The inundation was particularly severe in coastal New Hampshire and southern Maine, which were engulfed by high water and hammered by crashing waves for the fourth time since December.
Dozens of homes were flooded in Hampton, N.H., during Sunday’s high tide, with some sustaining major structural damage. The water level reached 12.34 feet, just shy of the 13 feet recorded during a storm in January, which was its third-highest on record.
Water levels rose to 13.32 feet in Portland, Maine, causing moderate flooding including washed-out roads. High water also covered streets in Kennebunkport. In eastern Maine and at Grand Manan Island just off the coast, numerous reports of significant flooding and debris — including boulders pushed by waves — were reported to the National Weather Service.
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Coastal road closures also occurred during the midday high tide around Boston.
While coastal flooding was most widespread from Massachusetts north, reports of coasting flooding over the weekend stretched as far south as Georgia. On Saturday morning, Charleston, S.C., was buffeted by heavy rain, strong winds and an ocean surge. In the North Carolina Outer Banks, a part of Highway 12 was closed because of ocean overwash.
By Sunday, moderate coastal flooding reached tidal portions of the Potomac River in Washington as well as the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Md.
The storm also produced heavy rains, which set records in some instances, and — in the high elevations of the interior Northeast — heavy snowfall.
Up to a foot of snow fell in the Presidential Range in northern New Hampshire on Sunday, prompting avalanche warnings.
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The storm was a major wind producer, spawning strong to damaging wind gusts as high as 50 to 70 mph in the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
The cause
The storm became so powerful as two systems — one that produced severe thunderstorms in the Southeast and a second that scooted across the Great Lakes — combined Sunday over New England. As the storm consolidated it gained strength while drawing strong winds northward along south-facing shores of New England. The intense winds from the south-southeast helped pile water up along the coast, causing flooding.
On Monday morning, the storm was centered near the border of Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. Its pressure was analyzed at 978 millibars, which is comparable with a Category 1 hurricane.
Share this articleShareThe hits keep coming
Sunday’s storm marked the fourth to cause major flooding in Maine and other parts of coastal New England in recent months.
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The first hit a week before Christmas, causing historic flooding from heavy rain and an ocean surge and leaving 400,000 without power.
Then a pair of storms on Jan. 10 and 13 brought the highest or second-highest coastal surge on record to Bangor, Bar Harbor, Cutler and Calais in Maine. Like the most recent storm, the January events occurred near a new moon, elevating tides.
The Jan. 10 storm also produced historically high water levels in several other locations along the East Coast.
2023 was tempestuous in Maine and the rest of New England. Most locations had one of their 10 wettest years on record. Washington County, in extreme eastern Maine, spent more time in the National Hurricane Center’s “forecast cone” — or zone where tropical storms or hurricanes were predicted to track — than any other county in the United States, according to Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist for television affiliate WPLG in Miami.
Why so much flooding?
The frequency of flooding in Maine is increasing because of human-caused climate change and rising sea levels. The sea level has risen more than a foot in the Northeast United States since 1900 and is rising faster there than the global average.
NOAA has documented a tremendous increase in the average number of flood days per year along much of the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. By 2050, Climate Central projects that the number of coastal flood days will triple compared to 2000.
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