Brief communication: Hurricane Dorian: automated near-real-time mapping of the “unprecedented” flooding in the Bahamas using synthetic aperture radar

Cerrai, Diego; Yang, Qing; Shen, Xinyi; Koukoula, Marika; Anagnostou, Emmanouil N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1463-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1463-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1463-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 5

Brief communication

|

27 May 2020

Brief communication |

| 27 May 2020

Brief communication: Hurricane Dorian: automated near-real-time mapping of the “unprecedented” flooding in the Bahamas using synthetic aperture radar

Diego Cerrai, Qing Yang, Xinyi Shen, Marika Koukoula, and Emmanouil N. Anagnostou

Data sets

Rapid NRT Events Q. Yang, D. Cerrai, Q. Shen, M. Koukoula, and E. N. Anagnostou https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/rapid-nrt-events/Dorian-2019/?region=us-west-2&tab=overview

Short summary

On 1 September 2019 Hurricane Dorian made landfall on Great Abaco, unleashing unprecedented destruction on the northern Bahamas. Dorian was characterized by extreme winds, extensive coastal flooding, and impressive precipitation. We studied the event through images acquired by the synthetic aperture radars (SARs) mounted on European Space Agency satellites to derive flooding maps showing the extent of the devastation. We found that the flooded area in the Bahamas was at least 3000 km².