Storm Surge Inundation Modeling of Five Winter Storms in Saco-Casco Bays: A Fvcom Based Numerical Study

Storm surge inundation model based on FVCOM is developed to capture minor to significant flooding near the shallow coastal areas of Saco-Casco Bay, harbor entrance and river banks using NOAA's integrated Portland data of 1/3 arc-second MHW Digital Elevation Model. The study aims to develop a novel high-resolution framework to accurately predict the capability of the coastal inundation, the depth of inundation and its vulnerability to potential sea level rise due to winter storms (WS) in these Bays for ungauged areas to map the flood zones. The model runs (MNEC and MNAM) were driven by NECOFS/WRF and NOAA's NAM forcing respectively to analyse the five classic WS in 2014-2015. The study reveals that WS-III produces a maximum surge of ~0.7m and WS-II cause a minimum surge of ~0.3m. In all cases, southward wind-driven coastal current flowing across the Saco River mouth harbor entrance gets intensified but strength varies.