Surge map understanding.

[OuterBanker]

I haven't been around lately because my house flooded during Matthew. I stepped out of bed into a foot of water, we are still dealing with restore and repair. I noticed that we now have an new storm surge map for NC and NHC will be issuing storm surge watches and warnings for the US. I'm a bit confused about the color coding. Red is always assumed to be the worse case scenario and it is, but in the case of storm surge it seems that the red area only shows up in the cat 5 range. Blue on the other hand seems like a safe color, but in storm surge is seems like the worse because it seems to mean that you flood at less than three feet above sea level. My home is in an area that is blue at a cat 2 storm level. Is that good or bad. In other words, is it better to live in a blue or red zone in storm surge?

[hurricanetrack]

I worked on the original storm surge maps for coastal NC back in 1998/99 and know the color coding well. Many people thought the red was bad - they would see it and exclaim, "oh no! I live in a red area, I am doomed!"

Quite the contrary....


If you are in the red colored area, it is generally a good sign meaning that it would take one heck of a hurricane to inundate you.