SAVANNAH ― Ask coastal Georgians why the state’s 110-mile-long shoreline seems stormproof, and they’ll talk geography.
Hurricanes and tropical storms can come at the coast from three directions, and terrain offers protection from two of them. Systems moving in from the Gulf of Mexico and the west, as Tropical Storm Debby did earlier this week, must cross 150 or more miles of energy-sapping land to get to the beach. As for cyclones sliding north up the Atlantic seaboard from Florida, those storms tend to stay offshore due to the combination of the “Bermuda high,” a semi-permanent area of high pressure off the East Coast, and the westward curvature of the state’s shoreline, known as the Georgia Bight.
But then there’s the third hurricane glide path: straight in from the ocean. To storms coming in from the east, Georgia’s coastline looks less like a pocket and more like something else.
A funnel.
This storm course, known as the Cape Verde track, had Hurricane Hugo targeting Georgia in 1989 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. Both storms drifted north as they entered the funnel and made landfall in the Carolinas.
“I hate to use the word luck but there’s no reason why Hugo couldn’t have hit Savannah instead of Charleston,” said Chuck Watson, a Savannah-based scientific researcher who specializes in natural hazards. “It’s just a statistical anomaly. The notion that our geography protects us is a myth that I’m constantly having to debunk.”
Savannah’s reputation as “Dodge City” when it comes to storms grew this week as Tropical Storm Debby weakened as it neared the coast. While the storm caused some flooding inland and along the coast, a forecast for potentially “unprecedented” and “catastrophic” rainfall proved an overestimate.
The near miss extended the Georgia coast’s run of avoiding catastrophic damage to 45 years, dating to Hurricane David in 1979, and its history of escaping a devastating storm to more than a century.
Go back to the 1890s and early 1900s, though, and coastal Georgia absorbed three serious strikes in the span of a decade, including an 1898 hurricane that killed at least 179 people. All three storms followed the Cape Verde track and slammed into the shore packing winds in excess of 111 mph.
Watson and other scientists can’t explain the forces behind that deadly cycle — those hurricanes arrived long before satellites existed to track and record storm movements. The potential for a Cape Verde storm to once again visit Savannah and the Georgia coast is why hurricane threats should not be downplayed, Watson said.
The risk is also why emergency management pros and elected officials, such as Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, are upfront with the public as storms approach.
“We hope people will see we are using data and an integrated process, and that when we say it, we’re not just trying to scare them or get their attention,” Johnson said. “There might be a time when we have to say ‘Get up out of Dodge,’ and when that happens we want people to trust us enough to move on it.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Statewide threats
Storms don’t have to make landfall along the Georgia coast to wreak havoc in the state.
Hurricane Michael slammed the Florida Panhandle in 2018 as a Category 5 storm before churning into Georgia, still boasting 115 mph winds. The storm caused billions of dollars in property damage and crop losses, particularly in southwest Georgia.
Just last year, Hurricane Idalia struck Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 3, not far from where Debby came ashore Monday. In Georgia, Idalia hammered the state’s valuable pecan and cotton crops, leading the federal government to declare a disaster across 27 primary counties.
Other storms, like 2017′s Hurricane Irma, downed trees and caused widespread power outages as far inland as metro Atlanta.
If Georgia’s coast were to take a direct hit from a major storm, odds are it would cause more damage than the hurricane of 1898 did. Not only is the Georgia coast much more developed than it was then, but changes in the climate have amped up the destructive potential of storms.
Sea levels on the Georgia coast have already climbed more than 9 inches since 1935 and could rise another foot by 2050. At the same time, much of the coast is sinking.
Both factors mean the ocean is creeping closer to homes and infrastructure. If a hurricane were to strike, that advanced starting point would allow damaging storm surge to travel farther inland.
Warming oceans are also allowing storms to reach higher peak wind speeds and dump more rainfall over a shorter period of time, raising the threat of flooding, said James Kossin, a science adviser with the climate risk firm, First Street, and a veteran hurricane researcher.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
There is even some research showing more storms are stalling, as Debby did, which can also allow rainfall amounts to pile up, he said. Debby’s drenching rains overwhelmed some inland waterways and triggered flooding across swaths of South Georgia and coastal Georgia, where the tropical storm’s winds also downed power lines and trees in many communities.
Debby caused breaches in three pond dams in Bulloch County, located about 50 miles west of Savannah. The breaks, driven by more than 12 inches of rain in the area, flooded nearby roads and neighborhoods and displaced 75 people. Rivers, creeks and streams in the area were not expected to crest until Saturday, meaning more rain could result in additional flooding.
Rincon, a city near Savannah, received 13.72 inches of rain from Debby, the most in Georgia. Farther west in Screven County, the Rocky Ford community absorbed 13.2 inches.
Gov. Brian Kemp said on Friday that coastal Georgia “got lucky” after one storm model had indicated Debby could hit Savannah a second time after crossing into the Atlantic Ocean. Still, the torrential rains caused “significant” damage to dams, roads and farming communities in the state, he said, adding authorities were still assessing the extent.
More brushes with tropical storms are possible in the months to come.
There are nearly four months left in the current hurricane season and activity in the Atlantic Basin doesn’t usually peak until mid-September. The federal government, meanwhile, said in May it expected between 17 and 25 named storms to form this year. That was the most it had ever predicted ahead of a hurricane season.
On Thursday, it doubled down on that forecast, predicting between 17 and 24 names storms. And as of Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center was already tracking a new tropical wave over the mid-Atlantic. The agency said it has a 60% chance of growing into a cyclone in the next week.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of years since Hurricane David caused catastrophic damage. The article has been corrected and updated.
