At Salty Sam’s Marina in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., owner Matt Hanson and his crew thought they were going to come through last September’s Hurricane Ian with minimal impact. After all, the facility had floating docks secured to heavy-duty pilings that stood approximately 14 feet above the average water height.

The Category 5 hurricane hit the coastal community with a maximum storm surge of 15 feet and winds maxing out at 167 mph. “The surge was such that the docks floated up and over the pilings,” Hanson says. “We had 100 vessels in the marina at the time of the storm. There was such a mixed bag afterward.”

Docks that were parallel to the seawall held up better, but as of late May, salvage crews were still removing boats that were swept into the marina from outside its property.

Hurricane Ian certainly will not be the last storm to cause major damage. Ever since Hurricane Harvey parked off Houston for four days in 2017 and dumped more than 60 inches of rain, forecasters and emergency management officials have been trying to get the public to acknowledge the threats that rainfall and storm surge present. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Hurricane Center broadcast forecasts for wind and surge, but the focus has always been on the Saffir-Simpson scale’s category ratings, which are based on wind strength.

This year, NOAA will provide Peak Storm Surge Forecast graphics in the days leading up to a storm to increase the amount of information the public sees. The hope is that more people will heed evacuation orders instead of trying to ride out a storm.

“Storm surge is the hazard that can kill the most people in one day,” says Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center. “Freshwater flooding [from rainfall] has been the biggest killer at about 55% to 60% and can occur well inland.”

After Ian, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved grants totaling $40.1 million just for the removal of debris from Fort Myers Beach. The storm’s total economic impact was closer to $60 billion.

The Danger of Complacency

Thanks to a developing El Niño in the Pacific, experts are forecasting a near-normal
hurricane season, which started June 1 and extends through Nov. 30. Experts say there’s a 40% chance of a near-normal season, a 30% possibility of above-normal activity and 30% chance for below-normal storm frequency.

NOAA is forecasting 12 to 17 named storms with winds of at least 39 mph. Of those, five to nine could become hurricanes with winds exceeding 74 mph and one to four could be major hurricanes with a rating of Category 3 or higher. These have winds of at least 111 mph.

The problem is that when people who’ve lived through a smaller hurricane or dodged a near miss hear about a pending storm, many shrug their shoulders and assume they’ll be fine. “We definitely had friends who evacuated, but there was an incredible amount of people who thought it was going to be another wind event,” Hanson says about Hurricane Ian. “It seems like ever since Charlie [2004], every storm that passes through, the media has really pushed how much storm surge there was going to be. With Irma, a lot of people got tired of hearing the media hype the storm-surge thing, and this time [the media] were right, and it cost lives.”

Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami, is working with NOAA to improve hurricane hazard communications.

“Even if there is a perfect forecast, if people don’t listen to it or understand, it doesn’t do a lot of good,” he says. Using a term called anchoring bias, he explains that people latch on to the first bit of information they hear and stick to it instead of seeking to evolve or update that data. “You’re not keeping in tune with the evolving forecast,” he says.

Hurricane Ian is a good example of this because many people along the west coast of Florida locked onto the idea of the storm hitting near the Tampa area. “When Ian formed, the first few advisories had it tracking to Fort Myers, then, three days before landfall, they were talking Tampa Bay area,” McNoldy says. “Then it drifted back south, but the eventual landfall point was where it was forecast five days out. If you look at the track forecast cone, which is the center of the storm, two-thirds of the time, the eventual landfall point in Fort Myers was always in the cone.”

A Closer Look at 2023

Looking at this year’s forecast, the question becomes: Will the warmer Atlantic Ocean temperatures or El Niño have a stronger impact? Even if there are fewer storms, which is a product of El Niño, the warmer ocean temperatures can strengthen an Atlantic hurricane. As the folks of Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island can attest, it only takes one storm to create a bad season.

“I would probably put my money on the warm ocean playing a larger role than El Niño because the warm ocean is a here and now for a hurricane, and it can act on it immediately,” McNoldy says.

Richard Rood, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and a climate expert, says, “The temperature of the planet and the sea surface are extraordinarily warm. Every year for the last two decades, the amount of heat stored in the top 2,000 meters of the ocean has been increasing, and even a little bit is a lot.”

During the 20th century, most of the warming was because of the heat content of the ocean. In the 21st century, melting glaciers have played a greater role. “That’s very good for making hurricanes, and an El Niño suppresses hurricanes because the wind shear blows the top off them before they organize,” Rood says. One theory is that the warming temperatures in the northern hemisphere, where the colder winds generate before knocking off the tops of the storms, is keeping storms from moving as quickly and turning more of them into rain events, not wind events.

“With the increase in temperature, I would say that because of the warming planet, the statistics we used in the past are starting to change enough,” Rood says. A new term, compound flooding, is likely to become more common with the rising temperatures.

Compound flooding refers to the combined effect of rainfall and storm surge. “Compound flooding will become a certainty,” Rood says. “You can argue about hurricanes, but you can’t really argue about water and flooding.”

Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist and meteorologist at Colorado State University, says he would add barometric pressure along with wind and rain to the forecasts. He commended NOAA for adding the storm surge graphic to its upcoming forecasts, and he agrees that more rainfall will play a role in future storms, as well.

“I’m strongly advocating that we categorize hurricanes by [barometric] pressure instead of wind because wind gives you one characteristic of the storm,” Klotzbach says.

For example, Ian was a Category 5 but would have been a Class 4 in terms of barometric pressure. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, the storm was a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, but it was a Class 5 when judged by barometric pressure. The pressure is read in the eye of the storm, while the winds are read at the outer bands.

Another area of increased research for Klotzbach is where storms are likely to form. If one starts building farther east in the Atlantic, it’s less likely to reach the United States, instead curving to the north. “If you look at where storms tend to form, they are more likely to re-curve during El Niño years,” he says.

A Historical Perspective

Hal Needham, an extreme weather and disaster scientist with Flood Information Systems and GeoTrek, agrees with Klotzbach that barometric pressure would be a better way to classify hurricanes. Needham is also working on a mobile app that can help determine flood risk in a specific area. The information is based on flood and wind history. “People forget their hazard history, and what I’m working on is their flood and wind history,” Needham says.

When he says “people forget,” he’s including emergency officials. After Hurricane Nicole hit Florida in November 2022, Needham circulated three maps for emergency managers in Georgia: probability of saltwater flooding, probability of freshwater flooding and probability of high wind. “They were asking, ‘What storm is this?’ ” Needham says.

He and Klotzbach say that more people who live in or move to hurricane-prone areas need to research the region’s history. “People in South Florida, there was explosive growth in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and those decades were quiet,” Needham says. “There were no major hurricanes above Category 3 in the 1970s and 1980s.”

In the past 50 years, there have been six major hurricanes in South Florida, but in the previous 50 years, there were 12. “Major hurricanes are a normal part of the South Florida climate,” Needham says. “People need to know wind history, flood history and hurricane-track history, and look at ways to mitigate losses from those hazards.”

Klotzbach adds, “If you look historically, South Florida was hit by five Category 4 hurricanes in six years from 1945 to 1960. We are absorbing a lot more damage than we used to because there are more people living right along the coast.”

Ironically, quoting history can also cause the complacency that results in people taking the “it won’t happen to me” approach. Metropolitan centers such as Tampa and Miami have been spared over time, leading some people to wonder if they are due for a big storm. The last big hurricane to hit Miami was Andrew in 1992.

“Tampa has dodged several bullets, and one of these times it’s not going to dodge the bullet,” Klotzbach says. “In terms of preparation, a lot of it for people is, when was the last time you were hit? You have many people moving to Florida who haven’t experienced hurricanes and don’t know what it’s like.”

McNoldy says the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s were particularly active in South Florida, but because there aren’t many people left who remember those decades, complacency is building. “That, unfortunately, is kind of the way it tends to go because that’s another human-nature thing,” he says. “You refuse to accept that really awful things will happen to you.”

Finally, even those who successfully ride out a hurricane are likely to be without power, utilities, internet and other conveniences. “That’s why people are asked to evacuate,” Brennan says. “Even if you are in a place where you can stay, you’re going to be in a community with no power and no utilities. We’ve lost people due to accidents, medical issues, carbon-monoxide poisoning, large-scale power outages. If you have left an area, don’t go back until you’re told it’s safe to do so.”

Planning Ahead

Bill Roof, president of Roof and Rack in Orlando, Fla., which builds rack storage and other buildings for marinas, says his company follows the FEMA code requirements and state mandates for new structures. However, he adds, most of those requirements are based on wind.

“The flooding issue, we haven’t really had to deal with it other than what FEMA requires,” he says. “It seems like we have flooding in most of the buildings when we do have a hurricane. It’s not usually that high that it floats the boats on the first level of the rack.”

Roof and Rack built the dry-storage building at Salty Sam’s in Fort Myers Beach, and Roof says it came through Hurricane Ian pretty well. The same goes for nearby Snook Bight Marina. Older buildings, as expected, didn’t fare well.

“The newer product did very well,” Roof says. “We had two buildings at Palm Harbour in Placida that were about 10 years old, and they just had some trim and panels destroyed, and that was because of debris from the mobile homes next door.”

In early summer, he says, his company was doing inland-lake projects in the Carolinas that only had to be built to withstand 110-mph winds.

Following Hurricane Andrew, Florida adopted a universal requirement, the Florida Building Code. It mandates that new construction be able to withstand hurricane-force winds and have shutters or impact-resistant glass in all openings. For now, however, there are no requirements for rain or storm surge. Roof expects that the rules will be modified.

A Cautionary Tale

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Salty Sam’s got its rack storage building open within a few weeks, and there are now a few in-water slips for use by the Freedom Boat Club and charter boats. The waterfront restaurant is open, and there’s a dock where boats can pull up. The marina’s 65-foot pirate ship is up and running, as is a 50-foot sightseeing boat.

“The biggest takeaway has been you need to get the business up and running as quickly as you can,” Hanson says. “How do you suddenly generate income? Because you’re going to be writing some big checks.”

He also stressed the value of preparation. “The overriding lesson learned is having relationships with contractors and you need to have a good maritime attorney,” Hanson says. “In the days following [Ian], I was on the phone with this person all the time.”

If a storm is forecast, a marina operator should reach out in advance to an insurance attorney and a public adjuster for a commercial operation. “We didn’t do that immediately, and in retrospect, I wish we had,” he says. “You’re trying to deal with contractors, get bids and handle government interactions, as well.”

Another good idea is to develop a relationship with state and congressional representatives. “Have them down to your facility because in a time of need, they’re going to need to understand your business,” Hanson says, adding that improved accuracy of forecasts can only help. “The more that they can do to give us some accuracy of wind, water and rain is important,” he says.

Brennan says that the National Hurricane Center’s goal is to communicate as much information as possible to the public. “We’re getting better at forecasting rapider information,” he says. “One of the connections we’re trying to make is what the forecast means to people.” 

This article was originally published in the July 2023 issue.