Shorely Safe demonstrates town-specific flood forecasting dashboard for Highlands
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Summary
Joe Martucci of Shorely Safe told Highlands residents the company has launched a town‑specific tidal flooding dashboard that combines NOAA and USGS data, offers a flood‑height filter and municipality‑specific forecast videos, and will add a proprietary forecasted flood mapper by mid‑summer.
Joe Martucci, a meteorologist with Shorely Safe, described new tools the firm is providing Highlands to improve local flood awareness and communications.
"We started with Highlands at the end of last summer," Martucci said. He said Shorely Safe curates NOAA and USGS gauge data to create a user‑friendly tidal flooding dashboard that shows how many times a location floods per year, which months are busiest, and how long forecasted flood stages are expected to last.
The dashboard includes a "flood filter," Martucci said, that lets users search historic and forecasted flood heights (by datum options including mean lower low water and NAVD88) and compare a forecast to named past storms. Martucci gave the example of using the tool to compare a nine‑foot MLLW forecast to the water marks for Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy so residents can better understand the scale of a forecast.
Shorely Safe also produces short, municipality‑specific video forecasts the borough can share on social media and via Nixle alerts. Martucci said the dashboard and curated charts were released the week of the meeting and that the team expects to roll out a proprietary flood mapper that will visualize forecasted flood extent by July 4 or, at latest, by the end of the summer.
Why this matters: Martucci said local, digestible visual products and timed forecasts help residents and public works staff plan responses and staffing during nor'easters and other coastal events. He noted the tool is tuned to Highlands specifically ("we're talking about what's happening at Highlands"), not neighboring communities.
Martucci credited local partners, including borough emergency management coordinator Anthony Flores and DPW staff, for collaboration on messaging and operational details. He closed by inviting feedback from residents and reminding attendees that dashboard links and short videos will be posted on the Highlands site.
