Impact of Inlet Closures on Water Volumes in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey, USA

This paper describes the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the volume of water in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey, and the potential for inlet closures to reduce that volume, had they been in place at the time of the storm. Barnegat Bay is hydraulically connected with several other bays to form the largest bay system in New Jersey (over 326 km(2)). The importance of reducing the volume of water in the embayment during a storm event is to minimize back-bay flooding from the water volume itself and to mitigate additional back-bay flooding from seiching effects along the north-to-south axis of this bay system. Analyses of Barnegat Bay water volume time-series during Hurricane Sandy were made to compare water volumes for different combinations of Barnegat Bay inlet closures to water volumes with no closures in place. The storm event was numerically simulated for all inlet closure configurations utilizing the ADvanced CIRCulation model. This paper will discuss the effect of numerically "closing" three inlets that contribute to surge propagation into the bay system. The comparison is based on closing the inlets individually and in combinations.