Operational Hazard Assessment of Waves and Storm Surges from Tropical Cyclones in Mexico

Abstract

ropical cyclones and their associated impacts along the western and eastern Mexican coastlines have led to the recent announcement of the creation of a National Hurricane and Severe Storms Center in Mexico. While Mexico falls under the responsibility of the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center in Miami, the newly announced center aims to provide local warning advisories to local governments and emergency managers. This study developed their first operational tool, which provides rapid forecasts of hazard areas under the presence of waves and storm surges from tropical cyclones threatening Mexico. The tool is based on precomputed wave parameters and storm surges from 3,100 synthetic tropical cyclones. Maximum envelope maps for all of the events are stored in a system database that is accessed through a graphical interface. Using a search function of synthetic events, the user can select those events most analogous to the tropical cyclone in question in order to make an assessment of warning areas. The tool allows users to plot maximum envelope maps for individual events or maxima of maximum maps combining several events, either using precomputed values for the different parameters (wind, waves, and storm surge) or a normalized map. To demonstrate the capabilities of the operational tool, we present an example application based on Hurricane Patricia (2015). This tool could also be implemented by developing countries affected by tropical cyclones, which otherwise are often limited by numerical modeling capabilities, time, and budgets.