landfall
gregladen | August 26, 2012It is time to discuss, once again, the falsehood known as "Hurricane Landfall."
A hurricane is a whopping big thing. A hurricane can be bigger than some states. The physical region across which a hurricane is potentially deadly and damaging is very large, many tens of miles across, sometimes a couple of hundred miles across. The danger zones are often organized like this:
The central storm surge. A central region may have a strong storm surge caused by the low pressure of the storm. This may be dozens of miles wide, but the area of effect is determined as much by the shape of the coastline…