Florida king tides bring floods, beach erosion

We have been talking a lot today about these impacts along our beaches. I'm going to give you another look at Daytona Beach from our Hard Rock Hotel camera. And we've talked a little bit about some of the factors that are causing all of this, the king tide, the moon, the high winds that we're seeing, just quite the recipe that is causing some coastal erosion, some flooding impacts in areas as well. And so why are we seeing this? Why is this so bad right now? And what are some of the long-term impacts of this as well? Those were the questions that we had for Dr. Stephen Leatherman. He is a professor of coastal science at Florida International University. He is actually known as Dr. Beach because he is one of the top authorities when it comes to beach erosion, effects of sea level rise and rip currents, hurricane impacts, all that kind of stuff. And Fox 35's Johnny Jackson had the chance to speak with him about what we're seeing now and what that means for our beaches going forward. The main problem is that coastal areas, a lot of them are low-lying to begin with, the barrier islands and such where a lot of the development is located. And we have times where we have full moon, which is now, and also when the moon is closest to the Earth, the Earth is very close now, and the moon is what causes the tides. It causes high tide and low tide, gravitational attraction between that body and ours. And so when the sun and the moon all are together, we tend to, in alignment, we get the combined effect of that. And so you get the tides much higher than normal, and that can cause flooding. It does cause flooding of a lot of areas. So the big problem is that the flooding, of course, is a problem if it gets high enough to go in people's houses, then the drywall is affected, has to be taken out, rugs, other things are destroyed. Furniture, the other thing people realize is that saltwater flooding, the saltwater can get into the fuse boxes, and that salt can arc the two electrical lines and eventually cause a fire. That's the worst situation. We see that a lot of times after big storm surges and areas after Sandy did that, New Jersey and other places. It arcs out the two lines. So hopefully that's not happening. But I was involved in the study of what to do about Venice. Venice, you know, is a 15th century, very historical area. And San Marco Square was being flooded, and these historic buildings were being ruined by the flooding because it also affects the concrete. Over time, the flooding will cause destruction of the concrete. And, of course, it takes quite a bit of flooding, so we developed a way of closing off the inlets so whenever they get what they call acqua, ultra water, high water during the winter storms, they close off the inlets going into the estuary. So that's been done now for many, many years. But in our case, we can't really do that. We have what we have. And the only cure for this is people raise their houses as they could. But new houses obviously should be raised up by several feet or more in anticipation of further sea level rise. So it's a combination of sea level rise slowly, a few millimeters per year. And then, of course, when we get the full moon, what we call the lunar high tides or the king tides, then that's when the flooding really is happening to people who have low-lying properties. So you said that we don't really have much of a choice besides raising houses. How much would houses have to be raised to be considered safe? Well, if I were to raise a house, I'd probably go ahead and raise it four or five feet just to make sure. But typically, as we can see, it's the houses that are being affected that are flooding at two, three feet is what we're looking at right now. So mostly two feet. So, yeah, that's probably not economical for most people or not possible for most people. But the old wood houses, they used to have raised them, but our houses are mostly all concrete. So it's very hard to raise those houses, but it can be done. Remember the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was raised and moved a number of years ago, and it had 1.25 million bricks in it, and they picked up and moved thousands of feet inland. We're not going to be doing all that, but you can raise big structures is what I'm trying to say. So the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse stands 209 feet high. We heard some discourse around the Hunter's Moon. How much impact do these kind of lunar phases have on the level of tides that you're seeing? Well, that's it. When we see the full moon and we see it all in alignment with the sun, then we get the tides much higher than normal, which we call king tides. The normal tidal range is about 2.4 feet. And then spring tides, 3.1, but we're going beyond that by another foot or so. So it's a problem. So that's the normal, we have a normal tidal range of about 2.4 feet. We're getting above 3, up to almost 4 now with the lunar phase when we get the full moon. And that's what we're seeing now. It's happening now. And we're seeing a lot of communities kind of do these beach renourishment projects, kind of bringing in sand and terrain from other areas, is that going to be sufficient in your mind? Well, beach nourishment helps to build your beach back. Unless you add dunes or something, you've got to add elevation somehow to stop the flooding. And also, if you have inlets, the water is going to come through the inlets to get in there. And we also have rainstorms going on now. That adds to the amount of water available. and so if you don't have good enough runoff then that's another problem that's adding extra water to this particular cycle that we have in all these torrential downpours and then when we talk about some of the potential long-term impacts of of all of this sand and erosion kind of coming out of it what what could we see two five ten years down the line well uh it's gonna continue to be a problem it can get a little bit worse of course if the beach erodes depending on where you are if you're on a beachfront house but a lot of houses that are flooding are actually not right on the beach a little bit farther inland because a lot of beaches have sand dunes which shouldn't have the water so it's the water it's more interior than that so again there you get the combined problem of the rainfall being trapped and then water from the fresh water and then coming tide together i think it's causing so much problem right now what do you see as the the thing that communities can do or the the one or two things communities can can do to at least protect some of the homes on the on the beaches well one of the things that venice was doing before we put these gates in and stopped the water coming through the inlets is individually the merchants would install something at their door that would block the water. So people need to think about that, too. If they have a house, if the water's coming through the door, then they would put in, and have it already set to be put in, a piece of metal, and it's sealed, to not let the water go into doorways where the water would come from. So that was being done in Venice before we came up with this grand project to stop the total flooding. So individually, businesses and homeowners could do that. any any doors they have or any low and outlying areas put in a piece of metal that's in a slot take it back out put it back in whenever there's a flooding and then make sure it's tight and sealed and that will stop the water from getting into their house with these communities putting uh continuing to kind of inertia put sand back in is is that just you know sand comes out put back in sand comes out put back in sandbags work pretty well but of course it depends on how how long the flooding lasts because water will go through the sandbag so okay yeah that's that's kind of a quick fix and it stops flooding for a number of hours or so but it's persistent it's going to go through that that's the reason i'm saying they wanted to have this slotted technique like they did all you know of course they had frequent flooding in Venice now we're getting more often things that we used to so it's so important to think about particularly if you're shop owner i think shop owners in particular don't want water coming into their shops and so they could think about doing this uh this technique that was used in Venice for gosh a long period of time dr Leatherman if you if you were uh you know looking into buying some some beachfront property or looking to start uh a store or manage a store close to the beach what would you what would be some things you'd look at well beachfront property or again property in the interior where water gets in through inlets and stuff, you see this in Fort Lauderdale and up where you are as well. I would be concerned about the elevation. I think you ought to check the elevation. I wouldn't want to be in the higher areas than the low areas. I know people are attracted to the water, but on the other hand, if your house is not elevated, and of course a lot of new houses have been elevated. They bring in crushed rocks from the limestone from the quarries, and they build them up higher. You see them higher. What's happened down in South Beach They had flooding They had water coming up in the drains And so they made a one-way passage For the water to try to come up The door storm drains It's blocked, it can't come up that way Then they put in a seawall Or a bulkhead on the bayside And they raised Alton Road Which is a major road on the bayside It was very low The problem with raising the road was Now it doesn't flood But it's throwing water onto the properties so gosh you got a problem just dealing with all that if your house is in a low line area so i suggest that people are buying a house you need to be aware of the elevation of your house and think about uh you know i'd want to be up at least five feet above the high water level just to make sure is there a future where we see just about every home in florida raised that four or five feet, like you mentioned? Well, as you realize, it's only really near the edge of the water and the interior bays. As you go farther inland, the water won't get in there. Unless we have a storm surge. If we had a storm surge, of course, a landfall and hurricane, there's going to be a lot of penetration of the water much further in, and the water will be much higher and do much more damage. And we are subject to hurricanes. I mean, where you are, not so much so. They tend to It's farther south here in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, so they tend to go along the coast, but as we saw with some hurricanes like they did along the coast on the southwest coast with Hurricane Helene, still flooded Sarasota and Clearwater and that area, and didn't even make landfall. So you've got to think about that, too. It just depends on what you're worried about. Are you worried about the lunar tides and the rising sea level? Are you worried about hurricanes and the really much larger storm surges with much larger flooding, which is higher and goes farther inland?