An Eulerian View of storm events and their relationship to storm surge along the coast of Alaska

Automated, "objective" storm classification methods work with selected meteorological variables to identify cyclonic systems. Typically a Lagrangian approach is used, whereby a storm is identified and then tracked throughout its life cycle. For weather-dependent applications, however, the action of a storm at a given point is important, e.g., coastal engineering. An event algorithm that implements this Eulerian approach to storm identification has been developed by Atkinson (2005). Using this algorithm two storm event databases are built and related to surge events as recorded at NOAA water level stations for various sites around the coast of Alaska. The first event database is derived from wind records for select coastal weather stations in Alaska; the second using winds from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset.