Yesterday portions of Western Europe were on storm watch: A strong North Eastern Western wind and the right (rather wrong) tide caused water levels to rise abnormally.
My civil engineering background was the reason for looking for tidal information at the regular ‘peil stations’ (water level stations): this information is actually harder to find than usual because the Dutch national organization that is in charge of the nations water defences, has an extremely awkward web site (Rijkswaterstaat) where the actual tidal data is hard to find. It’s your lucky day, though: I did this for you.
That brings me back to that picture above: Obviously, the water level at Harlingen reached a height of 3.20 meters, which is over 2 meters than normal (if I’m not wrong, Harlingen reported the highest recorded water levels). Official reports dryly mention that the dikes apparent held nationwide.
update: CBC report on the storm surge
It really felt like a North Western. :-)
Right: north western. I keep thinking about our north easterns.