How to Prepare for Hurricanes and Earthquakes in Delaware

Adobe Stock Wondering what to do if and when earthquakes and tornadoes threaten to strike in and around Delaware? Here’s what you need to know.

On a national scale, Delaware charts near the bottom in terms of natural disasters. (Florida, Texas, California, and Washington are among the most at risk.) But this does not mean that it is impregnable. The Delaware coast is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.

Over the coming years, our state is expected to experience higher temperatures, more heat days, more heavy rainfall and higher sea levels. The effects of each of these industries, infrastructure, natural resources, and residents’ health threaten, according to the Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).

This means that the risk of floods and other disasters increases over time. We collected four of the most famous natural disasters and filtered them through the lens of Delaware. These experts told us how to prepare for floods as well as hurricanes and hurricanes in the first state. Now, they’re sharing ideas on how to prepare for some less common, but equally devastating disasters: hurricanes and earthquakes.

For more comprehensive disaster planning, visit PrepareDe.org, which is operated by the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA).

In the summer of 2020, three tornadoes landed in Delaware, uprooting power lines and trees — some of which have yet to be cleared. Adobe Stock.

tornado

Threat level: 2/5

Tornadoes are rare but constant in Delaware—an average of one per year. “We had two tropical systems that generated hurricanes; the main cause was Hurricane Isaias from two hurricane seasons,” says Dan Leathers, a Delaware climate scientist and professor at the University of Delaware.

The storm produced the most vicious long tornado in the state. As the Washington Post reported, the record-breaking hurricane stretched nearly 30 miles, from Dover to Middletown. The tornado threw debris 10,000 feet into the air, tore the roof of William Henry Middle School and clocked 96 miles per hour from a weather station near the Delaware Department of Transportation.

Fortunately, there were no reports of injuries, although the National Weather Service said two tornadoes hit the area. Delaware has only two tornado victims on records dating back to 1950. A record six tornadoes landed in 1996.

In our part of the country, hurricanes are usually caused by tropical storms and hurricanes. As the force of the storm rotates around it, intense wind shear causes a sudden change in wind speed and/or direction. According to NOAA, tornadoes generated by hurricanes that make landfall can cause tremendous devastation. As a hurricane moves toward shore, tornadoes often develop on the edges of the storm.

“We get hurricanes [here] Regularly, but a very small number if you look back in time,” Leathers adds. “Not all tropical cyclones give you hurricanes. And it’s a fairly small percentage, about 1 in 3 that gives you a hurricane somewhere in the mid-Atlantic.”

And although a few have hit the first state in recent years, there is no long-term trend in increasing hurricanes, Leathers says.

earthquakes

Threat level: 1/5

Ask those around you, and most Delaware residents will likely tell you where they are at 1:51 p.m. on August 23, 2011, when a 5.8-magnitude earthquake (according to the United States Geological Survey, or USGS) struck a few hundred miles away in central Virginia .

While this area is known for seismic activity, our state is rarely affected.

Then, early on Thanksgiving evening 2017, a rumble erupted from about 6 miles northeast of Dover at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, according to data released by the US Geological Survey. The dishes in the cupboards shook. The patio chairs wiggled a bit. People remember the feeling very well.

But with a magnitude of 4.1, the quake – the largest Delaware has ever seen – wasn’t a major disaster. Unless you are near the center of Dover, the earthquake may be confused with a passing truck. The memes that followed are perhaps the lasting legacy of the 2017 event.

“There’s not much you can feel about Delaware,” says David Wunsch, our state geologist and director of the Delaware Geological Survey (DGS), “and another big of 2017 was weird.”

The moving tectonic plates that helped shape the Atlantic coast about 190 million years ago have been fairly quiet ever since. But over time, even calm areas can accumulate some tectonic pressure that is released in the form of an earthquake. Unlike California and the famous San Andreas fault system, Delaware does not depend on such a geological phenomenon.

“The bedrock below us on the East Coast and mid-Atlantic is old and not active,” Wunsch explains. “We get these little earthquakes because the crust adapts over time, but that’s a quiet part of the country.”

The 2017 earthquake was the 58th event documented in Delaware since 1871, according to the DGS. It represented a once-in-a-decade event in Delaware: an earthquake that people could feel. About 98 percent of the roughly 3 million earthquakes that occur worldwide each year fall under 3 degrees. The largest previously recorded event hit Delaware in 1973 with a magnitude of 3.8.

But we really don’t know much about what lies deep in the land of Delaware. Unlike some of our southern and Appalachian neighbors, we don’t sit on rich natural gas or oil wells, so other than for research purposes, companies haven’t drilled deeply into our land, Winch adds.

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