Along the East Coast today many roads were underwater from a combination of extremely high tides, onshore flow, remains of the flooding in South Carolina, and rising sea levels. A number of roads were forced to close, including the access to Tybee Island along the Georgia coast near Savannah.
This is the third time in a month that the tides have been so high. This is due to a combination of the alignment of the sun, moon and Earth, the position of the moon in its orbit at the closest point to earth (which is why it has appeared as a “Super moon”), and strong winds blowing water towards shore, raising sea level even more than usual. Earlier this month the strong winds were from Hurricane Joaquin but the onshore flow is still very strong due to other atmospheric pressure patterns this week.
You can read more about this at the Washington Post here.
Could this happen more frequently in the future? If the current trend of rising sea levels continues, it seems likely that flood events like these will happen more frequently, although this event itself is not due primarily to those increases.
