Flash Flood Hot Spot Climatology Michael Moneypenny, National Weather Service, Raleigh, NC Jamie Wir

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Flash Flood Hot Spot ClimatologyMichael
Moneypenny, National Weather Service, Raleigh,
NCJamie Wirth, North Carolina State University
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Project History

• Part of a larger collaborative COMET program
  between NCSU and NWS to study inland flooding
  from tropical systems
• Hot Spots are not limited to tropical flooding,
  so their identification has year-round
  application

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Motivation

• Average of 80 deaths annually in the U.S.
• Deaths are primarily due to folks driving into
  flooded areas
• Most problem areas are well-known to local
  emergency officials
• For Example

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Approaching Hardy Creek on Mt Zion Road
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Hardy Creek Bridge on Mt Zion Road
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Methodology

• Contact Emergency Managers in each county as well
  as local (city/town) officials
• Fact-to-face meetings to locate and discuss
  peculiarities of each hot spot
• Visit the hottest hot spots personally to
  gather detailed information pictures

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Hardy Creek on Old Cottonville Rd
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HmmmmmNo Guardrail!!!
Creek partially dammed
Hardy Creek Bridge on Old Cottonville Rd
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Problems We Encountered

• Difficulty finding time to visit the (31)
  counties we tried to send 2 individuals on each
  trip to stimulate the staffs enthusiasm
• Counties were at different levels of GIS
  technology 1) topo maps we hand-annotated
  during the visit, 2) large poster-sized maps
  (also often hand-annotated),
• 3) shapefiles

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Problems - continued

• Definition of hot Someone said this bridge
  flooded back in 73etc

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The Work in Progress Displaying The Information

• AWIPS
• Graphics - basically just a point and a
  name
• Text - a reference file on text
  workstations
• contains great detail
• cut-and-paste into statements
• Intranet

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Proof of Concept

• Dispatchers are not always aware of the problem
  areas Stanly County rescued 4 individuals after
  our SOO requested that a unit be sent to one of
  the hot spot locations we had mapped into AWIPs

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Questions?!?