*2.2. Storm History*

Detailed summaries of the storm history of Southern New England and adjacent Long Island, NY [42–45] coupled with historical storm tracks (1860 and 2018) [46] and the water-level record at the Newport, RI tide gauge provided the basis for compiling the storm history for the NPCA (Figure 4). Ten hurricanes made landfall within 200 km of

Napatree during the study period (1883–2014) (Figure 3). Prior to the first shoreline map (1883), a hurricane made landfall 20 km east of Napatree in 1869; however, little damage was reported west of landfall (Ludlum, 1963). Category 1 hurricanes passed offshore or well to the east of Napatree in 1916, 1924 and 1936; one tropical storm made landfall in 1936 near the track of the 1938 hurricane [25,46]. The storm of record for the area is the hurricane of 1938, making landfall on 21 September 1938 approximately 200 km west of Napatree, placing the top right quadrant of the storm along the southern New England coastline. The 1938 hurricane caused widespread erosion of shorelines from Long Island, NY to Cape Cod, MA [26,47,48]. Storm surge measured at the Newport tide gauge was 2.9 m above MHHW. Impacts of the 1938 storm along the Rhode Island shoreline are summarized by Nichols and Marston [26] and Brown [48]. Napatree barrier was breached near the eastern end (Figures 1 and 5), forming an inlet which was subsequently filled by the town of Westerly [26]. The Sandy Point barrier, which extended north off the western end of Napatree Point, was also breached, and the formation of the inlet initiated the 1.5 km northern migration and rotation of Sandy Point barrier to the current location (Figure 1). The period from the 1938 hurricane to the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962 (inclusive) included two landfalling hurricanes (hurricane of 1944—surge elevation 1.2 m MHHW; and Hurricane Carol, 1954—surge elevation 2.1 m MHHW). Hurricane Carol (Figure 5) overwashed barriers along the Rhode Island south shore [49,50]. Other notable storms include the Ash Wednesday Hurricane of 1962 [51], the 'Blizzard of 1978' [52], Hurricane Gloria (1985) [53], Hurricane Bob (1991) [54], The Halloween Nor'Easter (1991) [55], a December 1992 extra-tropical storm [56], the Patriot's Day extra-tropical storm (April 2007) [57], Tropical storm Irene (2011) and Superstorm Sandy (2012) [58].

**Figure 3.** Storm tracks of hurricanes that made landfall within 200 km of Napatree Point (Storm tracks from NOAA Digital Coast).

The review of historical storms was supplemented with an analysis of water levels at the Newport tide gauge. Zhang et al. [6,59] identified storms where the water level

exceeded two standard deviations, and this approach was modified slightly to use here. Analysis of the water levels at the Newport tide gauge showed two standard deviations is 0.8 m MHHW; however, this threshold value excluded several notable storms (Blizzard of 1978, December 1992), so the value was lowered to 0.7 m MHHW. The selected water level coincides with a storm with a return period of 4 to 5 years based on the annual exceedance probability curves for the Newport tide gauge [60]. Water levels at the Newport tide gauge exceeded 0.7 m MHHW 38 times between 1930 and 2018 (Figure 4). The storm water levels are summarized in Table S1 in the supplemental materials.
