I'm writing this while looking at  Wink TV, the local Fort Myers, Florida CBS affiliate.  They're airing a program on hurricane awareness and preparedness, a big topic in this part of the world with the mighty Gulf of Mexico lurking sulkily just three miles from my door, just down the Caloosahatchee River from where I sit at this very minute in the balmy calm of a Florida evening, halyards softly clanking in the breeze.  By the way the river is named after the Caloosa Indians who occupied this area before all the haphazard construction we see now.  Hatchee means river, so they named the river after themselves.  Therefore Caloosahatchee River is a redundancy.  Not important, just an aside, thought you might be interested.  My business plan mandates telling all.

Just recently Wink's chief meteorologist held a seminar at the Cape Coral Yacht Club where I keep my boat Nereis.  I sat in the back of the hall with its very high domed ceiling, a thirty-foot  glass wall to the north facing the docks where Nereis is moored.  I had a handful of business cards and some fliers, hoping for a chance to promote Hurricane Finder.  I spoke to the chief speaker after the meeting, gave him my card and asked him to look at my site.  Perhaps we will get some TV exposure.

The program mentioned storm surge and that more deaths and destruction are caused by salt water intrusion than any other aspect of a hurricane.  They had these really neat video diagrams showing how far water would spread inland and how deep that water would be over the map of the surrounding communities.  Scary.  They also mentioned that the greater threat of storm surge is caused by an onshore wind.  A lessor surge would occur with an offshore wind, one blowing from land to sea.  This makes sense as surge is caused by wind pushing water before it as well as the sharp decrease in atmospheric pressure within the storm that reduces compression on the water body allowing it to increase in volume.  Sailors speak of wind tides, a higher than normal tide caused by wind blowing up a river or into an inlet. An additional consideration in any river system is that as surge moves up the channel between steep banks water rises and rushes inland, which can cause a sudden increase in flooding miles inland as water spills over in a great surge of power.  It's not only coastal areas that need worry about storm surge but depending on topography inland areas may be inundated as well. What they didn't mention during all this was the most important direction and strength of the wind at any one location on the map.  

With Hurricane Finder users produce a picture of wind strengths and direction right at their front door.  If their canal, inlet, river is situated such that a forecasted wind will push enormous amounts of water onto their property they might want to think about sand bags, moving outside belongings, or even evacuation as twelve feet of salt water will soon occupy their children's playground in the back yard.  The wind's direction and strength is shown on Hurricane Finder as a picture of the storm produced from a NOAA forecast days in advance of the event.  You will have days to prepare or make arrangements to evacuate.  Twelve hours before a storm's arrival is no time to begin preparing or jumping in the car with the kids and their pets, all except the fish, they can fend for themselves. 

Hurricane Finder may save your life when electronics, this includes TV and radio, fail and fail they will, it also gives you life saving days to prepare for what's forecasted to happen.  All the prognosticators tell you is there's one hellacious storm coming, not how deep the water is going to be in your kid's sand box.

Be prepared, the boy scout motto, works here too.  Self reliance is a good thing.

JB