Jamie Pringle
Professor
Department of Earth Sciences
University of New Hampshire
Friday, October 10, 2025, 3:10pm
Chase 105
Abstract
Estimates of storm surge driven by hurricanes have focused on the strength of the onshore wind. These estimates of storm surge do not perform well when predicting the increasingly frequent and damaging winter time storm surges in New England. These high water events are driven by Nor'easters, extra-tropical cyclones that move along the coast and bring rain, snow and flooding to New England.
The flooding driven by nor'easters in the Mid-Atlantic Bight and Gulf of Maine are not driven primarily by cross-shelf winds—at least for the storms that move parallel to the coast, but are centered somewhat offshore. Estimates for the relative magnitude of storm surge are developed for these storms, and it is found that storms moving parallel to the coast but somewhat offshore can drive very large and long lasting flooding, and that this flooding is caused primarily by the alongshore winds. We show that similar patterns hold for the most damaging historical flooding events driven by hurricanes along the same coastline.
Bio
Jamie Pringle is a physical oceanographer with strong interests in bio-physical interaction and coastal physical oceanography. He was trained at Woods Hole, did a post-doc at Scripps, and has been at UNH since 2001.
