While New York City and other places along the Northeast coast are still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, they're also looking ahead to how they can prevent flooding in the future, when sea level rise will make the problem worse. They may be able to take some lessons from coastal Norfolk, Va., which is far ahead of most cities when it comes to flood protection.
Motorists drive through standing water at an intersection flooded from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida in the Ocean View area of Norfolk, Va., in November 2009.
Superstorm Sandy got officials in New York and New Jersey talking about how to prevent flooding in a time of global warming and sea level rise.
But the place on the East Coast that's most vulnerable to flooding is several hundred miles south, around Norfolk, Va. — and Norfolk has already spent many years studying how to survive the rising waters.
Scientists say what Norfolk has learned is especially important in light of new research showing that the coastline from North Carolina to Boston will experience even more sea level rise than other areas.
Originally published on Mon November 5, 2012 2:08 pm
A week after Superstorm Sandy slammed into the Northeast, temperatures are dropping and forecasters warn of another storm on the way. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands remain without power, gas shortages continue and tens of thousands still don't know when they'll be able to return to their homes.
A man crosses a flooded street in the wake of Superstorm Sandy on Thursday in Little Ferry, N.J. Surprise coastal surge floods caused by the storm battered Little Ferry, Moonachie and some other towns along the Hackensack River in Bergen County, all areas unaccustomed to flooding.
Every time a storm brings flooding to a large metropolitan area, there are calls to improve the levee systems that are designed to prevent flooding.
But there's a major problem with doing that. "We don't know where all of our levees are," says Samantha Medlock with the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
Originally published on Mon November 19, 2012 3:50 pm
There's been no shortage of before-and-after imagery portraying the coast in Sandy's wake. One of the more impressive ways to see the storm's impact is by exploring this map assembled by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
We took a few screen grabs of the destruction around Seaside Heights, N.J., to create these sliding previews — but you can see much more if you zoom in on NOAA's interactive map.
What does satellite imagery reveal about Hurricane Sandy? Owen Kelley at NASA is using satellite data to visualize the internal structure of the storm and Marshall Shepherd, president-elect of the American Meteorological Society and the director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, discusses what made this storm so unusual.
Although it was written in 1882, Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People still resonates today. Richard Thomas and Boyd Gaines, the stars of a new production of the play, join Ira Flatow to talk about the play's themes of power and truth, and the role of whistle-blowers.
