Water, Water, Everywhere: Hurricanes And The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

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Picture Credit Mark Sudduth

Don't ask me how I stumbled onto this information. (Suffice it to say that it was a rainy day and that strange things pop up when one googles "Brooklyn") I found my way onto the National Hurricane Center's web page. The center has a storm surge simulator for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (the tunnel linking Brooklyn and Manhattan.) It is pretty scary but definitely worth watching. The simulation looks at the storm surge after a Category 2 hurricane. Basically, the tunnel would totally fill up with water. Yikes! Not good! And that is only for a level 2 storm.
So of course, I had to investigate further and landed on the site of NASA where I found a flood map after a category 3. It's terrifying. Here is an excerpt from the report:

According to the 1995 study, a category three hurricane on a worst-case track could create a surge of up to 25 feet at JFK Airport, 21 feet at the Lincoln Tunnel entrance, 24 feet at the Battery, and 16 feet at La Guardia Airport. These figures do not include the effects of tides nor the additional heights of waves on top of the surge. Some studies suggest that hurricane strengths may intensify in most parts of the world as oceans become warmer. However, how much more frequently they will occur is still highly uncertain.

Hurricanes have hit New York City in the past. The strongest hurricane was a category four storm at its peak in the Caribbean, which made landfall at Jamaica Bay on Sept. 3, 1821 with a 13-foot storm surge. It caused widespread flooding in lower Manhattan. The "Long Island Express" or "Great Hurricane of 1938," a category three, tracked across central Long Island and ripped into southern New England on Sept. 21, 1938, killing nearly 700 people. The storm pushed a 25-35 foot high wall of water ahead of it, sweeping away protective barrier dunes and buildings.

Just this week I attended the Community Board 6 Meeting about the Gowanus Canal. One topic at the meeting was the flooding of the immediate area after a severe storm. A hurricane would really do a number on the neighborhoods around the canal. And in case you did not know, hurricane season only ends on November 30th.