U.S. hurricane center pushes to improve storm surge warnings

Friday marks the end of an Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season where the greatest devastation was caused by water rather than wind, U.S. National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb said. Accordingly, the center is ramping up efforts to develop new warnings that better convey the threat from the deadly storm surge pushed ashore by monsters like Sandy, which slammed the U.S. Northeast in October. "We’ve been working toward a new storm surge warning for a few years now," Knabb told Reuters in an interview at the hurricane center in Miami. "And Debby, Isaac and Sandy show us how much we really need to hit the accelerator on getting that storm surge warning out the door."