Back of the Envelope Surge Tool

The Back of the Envelope Surge tool is a spreadsheet application used to perform a quick evaluation of tropical cyclone storm surge potential within the NWS New Orleans/Baton Rouge's forecast area of responsibility. It is a first guess storm surge application that produces a surge profile relative to the center of a storm. This tool takes the latest National Hurricane Center advisory information as input, along with a representation of a sea level pressure field to generate a storm surge forecast for various strategic locations in the area. The technique uses hurricane pressure and wind parameterization schema to produce time series of the expected surge at those locations through 120 hours. The system has been calibrated using the storm surge climatology of the forecast area. This tool is intended to be used in an operational setting, but it can also be used as a training tool to demonstrate behaviors of surge from storm morphology. The benefits of the tool, performance in past cases, along with the role of incorporating this information into decision support services during tropical cyclone impacts will be discussed.