The tidal record on the East Coast of the United States reveals the frequent semidiurnal perturbation of the storm surge on the South Atlantic Bight. Tropical cyclones were examined to be one of the main triggers for these perturbation events. The peak of the storm surge is centered in the mid of the South Atlantic Bight, and radiating along the coast southward and northward. The process-oriented experiments were designed with parametric determination based on the historic events. The experiments were carried out in order to further discuss the various factors of tropical cyclones for their effect on the storm surge and tide interaction. The experimental analysis shows the storm surge and tide interaction is the most severe when a cyclone is moving orthogonal to the coastline, although the parallel-to-shore tropical cyclones are the most observed in history. The intensity of the semidiurnal perturbation to storm surge is positively correlated to the wind strength and the radial of the maximum wind speed of a cyclone, but negatively correlated to the translation velocity of a cyclone. For a cyclone moving parallel-to-shore, the corresponding storm surge perturbation lasts the longest and is the strongest, when the “fetch” of the alongshore wind with speed >17m/s (the criticality of the wind speed of the Tropical Storm based on the Saffir-Simpson category) reaches the maximum on the continental shelf of the mid of the South Atlantic Bight. High correlation is found between the tropical cyclone induced alongshore oceanic current and the semidiurnal perturbation to storm surge.
