Overtides at the Inner Shelf Offshore of a Cape During Extreme Atmospheric Forcing

Juan Felipe Paniagua-Arroyave, University of Colorado, INSTAAR, Boulder, United States, Arnoldo Valle-Levinson, University of Florida, Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, Gainesville, United States, Sabrina Marie Parra, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, United States and Peter N Adams, University of Florida, Department of Geological Sciences, Ft Walton Beach, FL, United States
Abstract:
To investigate how shoal‐swale bathymetry influences inner‐shelf hydrodynamics during extreme events, we provide observations at a swale ~13 m deep within Cape Canaveral shoals, ~36 km away from Hurricane Matthew's path during October 2016. When the Hurricane was the closest, current speeds reached 2.7 m/s at a distance ~15 km away from the shoreline. During the storm, currents changed direction counterclockwise from southwestward (speed ~2.7 m/s) to northeastward (speed ~1 m/s). These unidirectional, strong currents concurred with distorted tidal flows, which we suggest that occurred analogously to tidal distortions caused by a river discharge in a channelized tidal flow. Our findings highlight an unreported connection between atmospheric forcing and inner shelf hydrodynamics that can inform morphodynamics and ecological models of inner shelves with complicated bathymetry