Hoboken, like its surrounding areas, has a history of flood issues. This was on full display the weekend of March 23 to 24 when a Nor’easter blew into the area. Consistent rain fell all through Saturday into Sunday.
Around noon on that Saturday, the City of Hoboken released an emergency advisory through its alert system advising residents to avoid low-lying areas as “intense rainfall of greater than 0.8 inch per hour” would result in these low-lying areas becoming flooded. In total, about four inches of rain fell, resulting in certain locations being flooded into the night.
Some residents took to posting videos to YouTube in the aftermath of the several hours of rain. These videos depict streets that had turned into rivers, with cars driving through several inches of water in some areas and curbsides that had become small ponds, making them impassable by pedestrians. During occurrences like this, the City of Hoboken takes extra precautions, including offering discounted rates in parking garages so that cars are not stuck in these flooded areas and deploying no-parking signs in low-lying, flood-prone areas.
The plan that Hoboken employs during these heavy storms has been established for a while now, as it is often expected that persistent rain will bring at least slightly dangerous flood conditions. But why is this? The answer lies in the topography of Hoboken and the type of land that it is on. A paper that applied a “weather–hydrologic–coastal–stormwater framework” to the city’s geography and urban configuration found that “Hoboken’s low-lying topography (the southwestern part of Hoboken is less than 1 meters above sea-level) and 94% impervious coverage makes it vulnerable to flooding from storm surges and rainfall.” Additionally, Hoboken has a combined sewer overflow (CSO) system, an older system for drainage, which has added to the flooding issues. One of the biggest flooding issues in recent years for Hoboken happened in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The major problem with Sandy was the storm surge, which measured 2.5 meters. According to the article, the result was “the storm surge draining into the inlets and surcharging the drainage system,” meaning that the system was overloaded and could not properly drain out the flood waters.
The future of flooding for Hoboken, statistically, is not reassuring. According to Risk Factor, which analyzes flood, fire, wind, air, and heat factors in specific areas, “there are 13,170 properties in Hoboken that have greater than a 26% chance of being severely affected by flooding over the next 30 years.” This amount makes up 87% of all properties in the Hoboken area, including both businesses and residential properties.
To help with future flood prediction, Stevens has secured nearly $1 million in federal funding to research the area. Stevens has done a great amount of work in the past leading-edge flood-prediction and emergency preparedness systems, and this funding will go to improving it more by attaining more sensors and equipment to track and benefit coastal New Jersey communities. Specifically, Muhammad Hajj, director of Stevens’s Davidson Lab, notes that “By collecting critical, perishable data before, during and after extreme coastal events, we will be able to validate the accuracy of our predictive models towards developing best practices for mitigation strategies of future hazards to coastal regions.” Stevens’ data in the past has been important in helping the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as some federal agencies, react to emergencies and aid in search and rescue missions. For the future, Hajj states that “Local communities and planners will be able to use this data to plan and undertake new projects locally that protect, preserve, restore and enhance the region’s coastal areas and resources.”
