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NEW YORK and the coast of New Jersey are at risk of being hit by a major
hurricane, causing a significant loss of life and 鈥渢ens of billions of dollars鈥�
in damage, coastal geologists warn. Their findings come from a study sponsored
by the insurance industry, which is assessing the financial risks it faces.

Intense storms rarely hit the New Jersey coast and developers have taken few
precautions to protect buildings from heavy storm damage. The last major
hurricane to strike the Big Apple was in 1821, and the state of New Jersey has
only been hit by three smaller hurricanes since 1850, the most recent in 1903.
鈥淚t鈥檚 difficult to get a direct strike,鈥� says Chris Landsea of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration鈥檚 Hurricane Research Division in Miami.
Storms weaken over cooler water, and the shape of the coastline protects the
densely populated region from Virginia north to New York City.

Historical records of earlier storms are sparse to non-existent, but a new
geological study shows that severe storms have flattened the coast at least
twice in the past.

Jeff Donnelly of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts took
sediment cores from a coastal island marsh some 30 kilometres south of Atlantic
City. He found three layers of sand that storms had washed inland from the
beach. The thinnest came from a winter storm in March 1962.

Radiocarbon dating reveals a thicker deposit came from the 1821 hurricane,
which swept up the coast from Virginia to New York. Donnelly estimates it as a
category 3 storm鈥攙ery intense, with winds reaching 180 to 210 kilometres
per hour.

The thickest deposit formed some time between 1278 and 1438. Using current
erosion rates, Donnelly says the marsh was then probably a kilometre inland, so
the storm was probably more intense than the 1821 hurricane. 鈥淚t could have been
a category 4.鈥�

Donnelly says that these storms come around once every few hundred years, and
the risks are small during any given year. But no one knows when the next will
strike and the region is ill prepared.

The New Jersey coast is lined with resort towns built on low-lying islands,
and there are only a few evacuation routes leading inland. If the 1821 storm hit
Atlantic City today, 鈥渕etres of water would be in the streets鈥�, says Donnelly.
But, says Thompson Webb, a geologist at Brown University, 鈥淎tlantic City is
small potatoes鈥� when you realise you鈥檝e got Philadelphia and New York City
nearby.