Coastal Structures and Solutions to Coastal Disasters Joint Conference 2015
Coastal Flooding at the Gulf of Maine during the Patriot’s Day Storm
Publication: Coastal Structures and Solutions to Coastal Disasters 2015: Resilient Coastal Communities
ABSTRACT
The Gulf of Maine is frequently struck by Nor’easter storms during winter season. The strong wind produced by storm generates large waves and high surge, which may result in coastal inundation in low-lying areas along the coast when the storm peak coincides with high tide. In this paper, the state-of-the-art fully-coupled circulation and spectral wave model ADCIRC-UnSWAN was applied to investigate waves and circulation in the Gulf of Maine. The waves and surge level was well reproduced at wave buoy and tide gauge. While waves at offshore of Saco Bay reaches over 7.0 m at storm peak, it decreases rapidly when propagating into the bay, mainly caused by bottom friction and wave breaking. A clockwise circulation is identified at the offshore of Saco River. With the presence of waves, the clockwise circulation is greatly enhanced and moved further offshore. The surface elevation is also increased by 0.2m along the coast due to wave set-up.
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Published In
Coastal Structures and Solutions to Coastal Disasters 2015: Resilient Coastal Communities
Pages: 295 - 301
Editors: Louise Wallendorf, U.S. Naval Academy and Daniel T. Cox, Ph.D., Oregon State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8030-4
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Jul 11, 2017
Published in print: Jul 11, 2017
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