Catch the King Results
Catch the King Results
This page is a work in progress
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Come back soon to see more
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This page is a work in progress 🌊 Come back soon to see more 🌊
Catch the King (CTK) is an annual king tide mapping event that recruits volunteers to collect flooding data during the Perigean king tides—the highest tides of the year (view our 2025 flyer here!). This record-holding, crowdsourced flood data collection program has been engaging with volunteers since 2017. View results from over the years below!
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Catch the King 2025 Results
Thanks to the efforts of 167 volunteers, Catch the King 2024 was an incredible success! Community flood mappers from across coastal Virginia collected over 27,000 data points, delineating the impacts of king tide flooding and a nor’easter from October 6th-12th.
Read more at our blog post here and check back later for more details!
Catch the King Data Uses
Local Catch the King data is primarily shared with Dr. Derek Loftis, a scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), to validate and ground-truth VIMS flood prediction models. Read more about his work here!
Other projects and partners have used Catch the King data in various ways, including:
Old Dominion University’s “Measure the Muck” project has coordinated with CTK data collection since its inception. MTM project leads use CTK data to prioritize water quality monitoring sites to better understand how flooding causes increased nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
William & Mary Geographic Information System (GIS) students completed a priority analysis to identify neighborhoods in Norfolk that have high flood risk, high social vulnerability, and a lack of CTK data. These results help Wetlands Watch prioritize flood data collection in areas that need it most!
Christopher Newport University students used CTK data to support a research poster in 2024 for “Fear to Hope” ecosystem research at Ragged Island.
If you’re interested in conducting research using Catch the King data, please reach out to the Catch the King Coordinator.
William and Mary student priority analysis using CTK data, flood risk, and social vulnerability factors (slide screenshot).
Christopher Newport University student poster on king tides at Ragged Island, VA.
Catch the King Over The Years
This composite map from VIMS showcases all CTK data since 2017.
2024
From October 17-20, 2024:
187 volunteer mappers
~22,800 data points recorded in Virginia
2023
From October 27-29, 2023:
122 volunteer mappers
~13,600 data points recorded in Virginia
Additional data collection events also occurred throughout the summer and fall (including September's "wet run" tides and rainfall event and Tropical Storm Ophelia) in more new places across VA's Coastal Plain that we've never mapped before.
2022
From October 29, 2022:
151 volunteer mappers
~15,100 data points recorded in Virginia
Work in progress! Come back later for more.
2021
From November 6-7, 2021:
131 volunteer mappers
~6,700 data points recorded in Virginia
Work in progress! Come back later for more.
2020
From October 18, 2020:
162 volunteer mappers
~31,300 data points recorded in Virginia
2019
From October 27, 2019:
110 volunteer mappers
~24,900 data points recorded in Virginia
Work in progress! Come back later for more.
2018
From October 26-27, 2018:
368 volunteer mappers
~41,900 data points recorded in Virginia
Data Recap:
Scroll through this Story Map highlighting the 2018 event! Click here to open in full-screen.
2017
On November 5, 2017:
722 volunteer mappers
59,718 data points recorded in Virginia
Earned Guinness World Record for Most Contributions to an Environmental Survey
2017 Map of CTK Data vs. Model-Predicted Maximum Flood Extent
Blue drops represent CTK data and red drops show locations of Tidewatch and StormSense water level sensors. The flooding model is displayed using a range of blue hues corresponding with flood water depths, and are advised by VIMS' hydrodynamic models and by Tidewatch. Click here to open in full-screen.
Catch the King data is available to view via the Sea Level Rise phone app and the SeaRisingSolutions web portal for Tide Mappers who have participated in the mapping event. The general public does not have access to download CTK data sheets.
If you are interested in using CTK data or having a spreadsheet copy of the data, please reach out to the Catch the King Coordinator.
Get Data!
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