Images

Variance image of Isla Verde in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from a coastal video monitoring station. Image is compiled from 10 minutes of video and shows areas of more movement as brighter colors.

Shawn Harrison stands near video cameras on top of a building overlooking Isla Verde in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The cameras measure wave run-up and flooding as part of a study in response to Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria.

The urban reef at Isla Verde supports various species of protected corals, sea turtles, and crustaceans, as well as many Caribbean fish. It also protects the International Airport and numerous homes and resorts on the coast.

A broken concrete foundation and some shattered floor tiles were all that remained of the sea turtle researchers' field station and home base after Category Four Hurricane Michael struck Cape San Blas on Oct. 10, 2018.

Wave-tide gauge, pictured here on a coral reef amongst sea rods, brain corals, and sea fans, installed off Isla Verde in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

USGS Research Oceanographer Lauren Toth and Oceanographer Anastasios Stathakopoulos study a coral-reef core in the USGS’s Core Archive in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo: Dominique Gallery, USGS.

A deeply eroded sand dune on the beach at Cape San Blas shows Hurricane Michael's impact on parts of the Florida Panhandle shoreline.

Landsat 7 images captured before and after highlight the destructive path of the Category 4 storm.

A beach house in Cape San Blas, Florida destroyed by Hurricane Michael, which struck the Florida Panhandle as a Category Four storm Oct. 10, 2018.

Each one these blue dots represents a site where a storm-tide sensor bracket has been installed for the Gulf of Mexico pre-defined network. There are currently 85 brackets in Florida, 6 in Alabama, 3 in Mississippi, 18 in Louisiana and 26 in Texas, for a total of 138 bracketed sites. (Not all brackets will be used in all storms.)

The USGS creates a Flood Event Viewer for major flooding incidents, as a one-stop, interactive information source. On that website, viewers can click on each red dot (storm-tide sensor) to see details about it.

Coastal Change Storm Hazard Team map created Tuesday, 10/89/18 showing current forecasted beach erosion, overwash and inundation effects of Hurricane Michael's predicted landfall in the Florida Panhandle. Forecast will change with subsequent National Hurricane Center forecasts.

For ten years, this yellow concrete block house in Cape San Blas, Florida, dubbed Fish Inn, was the seasonal office, laboratory and living quarters for a team of USGS sea turtle researchers during their field season from November till April.

This flood event viewer map, dated Oct. 3, 2018, shows the extent and type of information collected by USGS hydrologists in North and South Carolina in the wake of historic flooding brought on by Hurricane Florence.

USGS hydrographer Daniel McCay uses a level to double-check a high water mark on a church door near Maxton, NC as his USGS colleague Mary Winsor observes on Sept. 25, 2018, in the wake of flooding brought on by Hurricane Florence.

USGS hydrologic technician Rob Forde flags a high water mark above the eaves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, 118 Manchester Road, Spring Hill, North Carolina on Sept. 21, 2018, in the wake of flooding brought on by Hurricane Florence.

USGS hydrographer Kyle Marchman measures a high water mark on the rear wall of a Kangaroo gas station on Highway 24 north of Fayetteville, NC on Sept. 18, 2018, after flooding caused by Hurricane Florence.

James Stonecypher measures flood waters from the Lumber River that breached a dam in Lumberton, North Carolina after the passage of Hurricane Florence, Sept. 17, 2018. 

A WaterWatch web map shows streamgages in North and South Carolina that approached or exceeded major flood stage EST on September 19, 2018, as the former Hurricane Florence, now downgraded to a tropical depression, deluged the states with rain.

David Stillwell, USGS hydrologic technician, performs a discharge measurement to help document and forecast flooding caused by Hurricane Florence at Long Creek in Rhyne, North Carolina on Sept. 16. 

 

A USGS storm-tide sensor, deployed in advance of Hurricane Florence's landfall. The sensors are housed in vented steel pipes a few inches wide and about a foot long. They are being installed on bridges, piers, and other structures that have a good chance of surviving the storm.