Geochemistry of Flood Waters from the Tar River, North Carolina Associated with Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew caused flooding in Eastern North Carolina that was categorized as a one in 500-year frequency event. Matthew was the second such event in less than 20 years, following Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The frequency of intense storms is projected to increase for many coastal areas, including North Carolina, because of climate change. The goal of this study was to gain a better insight into the geochemistry of flood waters associated with major flood events. Water samples (n = 22) from the Tar River in Greenville, North Carolina were collected over a two-week period after Matthew moved across the state. Results show that total Kjeldahl nitrogen, dissolved organic carbon, phosphate, and Escherichia coli concentrations and exports were significantly (p < 0.05) higher when the river was above flood stage relative to below. Isotopic analyses of δ15N and δ18O in NO3 in flood waters suggest that wastewater, possibly from sanitary sewer and confined animal feeding operation overflows, was the major source of nitrate associated with flood waters. Regulatory efforts to reduce nutrient loading to coastal waters may be complicated by contributions associated with intense storm events, given that such storms are becoming more frequent.

Near-Surface Frontogenesis and Atmospheric Instability along the U.S. East Coast during the Extratropical Transition of Hurricane Matthew (2016)

Hurricane Matthew locally generated more than 400 mm of rainfall on 8–9 October 2016 over the eastern Carolinas and Virginia as it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone. The heaviest precipitation occurred along a swath situated up to 100–200 km inland from the coast and collocated with enhanced low-tropospheric frontogenesis. Analyses from version 3 of the Rapid Refresh (RAPv3) model indicate that rapid frontogenesis occurred over eastern North and South Carolina and Virginia on 8 October, largely over a 12-h time period between 1200 UTC 8 October and 0000 UTC 9 October. The heaviest rainfall in Matthew occurred when and where spiral rainbands intersected the near-surface front, which promoted the lift of conditionally unstable, moist air. Parallel to the spiral rainbands, conditionally unstable low-tropospheric warm, moist oceanic air was advected inland, and the instability was apparently released as the warm air mass rose over the front. Precipitation in the spiral rainbands intensified on 9 October as the temperature gradient along the near-surface front rapidly increased. Unlike in Hurricane Floyd over the mid-Atlantic states, rainfall totals within the spiral rainbands of Matthew as they approached the near-surface front evidently were not enhanced by release of conditional symmetric instability. However, conditional symmetric instability release in the midtroposphere may have enhanced rainfall 200 km northwest of the near-surface front. Finally, although weak cold-air damming occurred prior to heavy rainfall, damming dissipated prior to frontogenesis and did not impact rainfall totals.

Four Key Concepts for Studying Context-based Compositions

This theoretical article investigates context-based compositions where we cannot identify the real-world context from the sounds alone. Examples include Stephen Vitiello’sWorld Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd, Jana Winderen’sThe Noisiest Guys on the Planet, Jacob Kirkegaard’s4 Rooms, Christina Kubisch’s compositions based on observations of the Ruhr district, Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling’sThe Dark Side of the Cell(2004) as well as Andrea Polli’sHeat and Heartbeat of the City(2004) based on weather data from New York. The article asks how these compositions establish their relation to a specific context. How do they invite the listener to include his or her knowledge of specific contexts? The article suggests four relevant terms that are useful when studying this relation between text and context:paratext,intermediality,enunciationandmediality.

The resonating past - Stephen Vitiello’s World Trade Center Recordings as a lieu de mémoire

Although many studies have focussed on the visual and textual media practices surrounding the cultural commemoration of 9/11, few have examined the audio media practices related to the event. As a response to this lack the article is an analysis of Stephen Vitiello’s World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999) as it was installed at the MoMA PS1 memorial exhibition September 11 (2011) which explored the ‘enduring and far-reaching resonance’ of the attacks. The piece is analysed as what Pierre Nora calls a lieu de mémoire, with a specific focus on what we, in line with media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst, may call the technical ‘chrono-poetical’ folding of time. The aim of the article is to show how Vitiello’s work, due to its media specific archival practices, addresses the events of 9/11.

Historical waterscape trajectories that need care: the unwanted refurbished flood homes of Kinston's devolved disaster mitigation program

In 1999 Hurricane Floyd pummeled the eastern portion of North Carolina (NC, U.S.A.), and in its wake many localities participated in federal home acquisition-relocation programs in flood-prone areas, with shared and devolved governance. This article reports on one such program that was conducted in the City of Kinston, where a historical African-American neighborhood called Lincoln City was badly flooded by water containing raw sewage from a compromised wastewater treatment plant upstream. Afterwards, some of the acquired homes were relocated to an adjacent area populated by middle-class, African-American families. The article explores to what extent political devolution of flood mitigation disempowered residents to deal with this crisis in their waterscape. Combining a framework from medical anthropology regarding the logics of choice and care with historical political ecology, it illustrates how devolved government policy led to a continuation of the waterscape's discriminatory history after the buyout program, with no recourse for local citizens as the program worked through a logic of choice that demarcated responsibilities. Understanding this case requires a historically informed assessment of social impact, in which the chosen flood mitigation measures are critically assessed using tools from historically-informed political ecology, leading to a longerterm logic of care where needed. Keywords: Devolution, flooding, path-dependency, waterscape, buyout, mitigation, care, choice

Modeling the Impacts of the Large-Scale Atmospheric Environment on Inland Flooding during the Landfall of Hurricane Floyd (1999)

The contribution of the large-scale atmospheric environment to precipitation and flooding during Hurricane Floyd was investigated in this study. Through the vortex removal technique in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the vortex associated with Hurricane Floyd (1999) was mostly removed in the model initial conditions and subsequent integration. Results show that the environment-induced precipitation can account for as much as 22% of total precipitation in the innermost model domain covering North Carolina coastal area and 7% in the focused hydrological study area. The high-resolution precipitation data from the WRF model was then used for input in a hydrological model to simulate river runoff. Hydrological simulation results demonstrate that without the tropical systems and their interactions with the large-scale synoptic environment the synoptic environment would only contribute 10% to the total discharge at the Tarboro gauge station. This suggests that Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Dennis preceding it, along with the interactions between these tropical systems and the large-scale environment, have contributed to the bulk (90%) of the record amount of flood water in the Tar-Pamlico River Basin.