One of the most devastating natural disasters is the landfalling tropical cyclone, which can cause catastrophic destruction both near and far from the storm center. High winds, storm surges, and heavy precipitation all contribute to the danger inherent with these storms. Coastal areas are especially vulnerable to tropical cyclones, because of the low topography -- often with significant hills or mountains further inland -- and the proximity to a large moisture source. Although damaging high winds and storm surges are usually only a threat within 200 km of a storm center, coastal boundaries and variations in orography can lead to heavy precipitation in coastal zones much further away from the storm system. Coastal frontogenesis, topographic modification, and interaction with multiple-scale features add to the complexity of a given storm's precipitation distruibution.

Atlantic Tropical Storms Marco (1990) and Jerry (1995) were chosen as cases where coastal effects markedly modify the precipitation distribution away from the storm center. Although neither storm reached hurricane intensity, each cyclone produced storm-total precipitation maxima over 230 mm. Both Marco and Jerry developed coastal fronts which combined with topographic influences, large-scale features, and antecedent conditions to cause substantial precipitation much further away from the storm center than would otherwise be expected. NCEP's Unified Precipitation Dataset (UPD), synoptic upper-air analyses from NCEP/NCAR's Global Reanalysis, NHC best track data, and hourly high-resolution surface data from the USAF's DATSAV3, NCEP's ADP, and ICOADS will be used to highlight the effects of the southeast US coast on these two tropical storms.