New Moon enhancing Hurricane Erin's tidal flooding impacts

HATTERAS, N.C. – Having the massive, hundreds-of-miles-wide Hurricane Erin plaything by your coastline is already a look for tidal troubles, with 12- to 20-foot waves and storm surge pushing ocean waters toward the mid-Atlantic shores. 

Turns retired the calendar is nary assistance either.

HURRICANE ERIN SLAMS NORTH CAROLINA, VIRGINIA COASTS

Thursday's unsafe tempest surge coincides with the caller Moon, which is adding a small other powerfulness to the tidal forces already successful play.

The caller Moon occurs erstwhile the Moon is positioned straight betwixt the Sun and Earth during its 29.5-day orbit.  

Both the Moon's and the Sun's gravitational propulsion connected Earth's bodies of h2o are what origin the regular tidal cycle. But erstwhile they're aligned, the tides get a small other propulsion and push.

When flooding is already successful the forecast owed to a tempest oregon hurricane, a afloat oregon caller Moon tin marque it worse by enhancing the tallness of precocious tide.

"Strong long-period swell associated with distant but ample and almighty Hurricane Erin volition hap simultaneously with higher astronomical tides, exacerbating coastal flooding threats," the National Weather Service bureau successful Newport/Morehead City, North Carolina, wrote Thursday.

This month, the caller satellite is adding astir 1-3 inches to the tidal heights, depending connected the location, according to the FOX Forecast Center. It tin beryllium adjacent much during king tides successful the bosom of wintertime and summer, erstwhile the Earth reaches its closest and farthest points from the Sun during its elliptical orbit.

About 7.5 cardinal radical are nether Coast Flood Warnings from North Carolina and Virginia up done Maryland, Delaware and into New Jersey and New York's Long Island.  

Most areas nether the informing are expecting 1-2 feet of tidal flooding during precocious tide, with immoderate areas seeing arsenic overmuch arsenic 3 feet, each fixed an other boost by the caller Moon.

Flooding concerns volition abate arsenic Erin moves farther distant from the coastline connected Friday and into the weekend.