Weathering Lake Erie seiche events and shoreline winter preparedness

Learn how-to with NY Sea Grant specialist, retired National Weather Service: Buffalo meteorologist

Submitted by New York Sea Grant

The western shore of New York state from Buffalo to the Pennsylvania border is impacted by seiche (pronounced saysh) events. Seiches are the result of wind blowing a sizeable standing wave across Lake Erie and onto the shoreline, causing flooding, rapid and intense erosion, deposition of sand and debris, potential hazardous conditions, such as rip currents, and risk to life.

To help waterfront property owners and shoreline managers deal with this impact, New York Sea Grant will offer a free "Seiche and Winter Weather Shoreline Preparedness" webinar from 1-2:30 p.m. Nov. 28. Register online at https://www.nyseagrant.org/glcoastal/.

Funding for this webinar is provided by the New York State Environmental Protection Fund under the authority of the New York Ocean and Great Lakes Ecosystem Conservation Act, through cooperative agreement with NYSDEC's Great Lakes program.

The "Seiche and Winter Weather Shoreline Preparedness" webinar will be led by New York Sea Grant Great Lakes Processes and Hazards Specialist Roy Widrig and retired National Weather Service: Buffalo meteorologist Judy Levan.

Widrig and Levan will cover what makes Western New York prone to Lake Erie seiche events, the weather that causes them, their influence on the shoreline, and best practices for making public and privately owned shoreline properties more resilient to seiche events.

Widrig, author of New York Sea Grant's "Seiche Events on Lake Erie" fact sheet, noted low-lying areas along the Lake Erie shoreline from Hamburg to Van Buren Point near Fredonia are particularly vulnerable to seiche impact.

Property owners and manager of shoreline areas along New York's Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River shoreline may request Widrig's virtual and in-person assistance with evaluating a waterfront area for erosion problems. New York Sea Grant provides a virtual site visit portal at http://www.nyseagrant.org/glcoastalvirtualsitevisit.

The "Seiche and Winter Weather Shoreline Preparedness" webinar and site erosion evaluation assistance are offered as free educational services of New York Sea Grant, a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York, and one of 34 university-based programs working with coastal communities through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Sea Grant College Program.