The lower barometric pressure of the storm does contribute to the storm surge but is the minor player. The last I heard of the pressure in the eye was that it was at 960mb. This means a 1.12 foot surge due to lower pressure. Since they were predicting a nine foot storm surge, that means that about eight feet of that surge was due to the wind and about one foot due to lower pressure.
This means that the wind blowing from inshore would decrease the water level to a much, much lower level than the rise due to lower pressure.
ETA:
I just thought.... in the open ocean, you would be right. The wind speed wouldn't matter, only barometric pressure. However, at a shoreline there is no water flow from shore to replace the water blown by the wind. In the open ocean the wind would create a circular flow of water around the eye. At the shore that circular pattern would be disrupted so the water would pile up on the side approaching shore and drop on the side moving away from shore.
But waves - even large waves - are a surface phenomenon, and draw their water 'supply' from immediately in front of themselves. Proximity to shore only matters when the water is very shallow, and the waves 'break'.
The big waves generated by a hurricane are present on both sides - you will see big waves breaking on the shore both north and south of the storm.
Waves are not simply driven ahead of the wind. They are eliptical and relatively shallow; And they appear to move towards the shore in almost all circumstances - even against the wind - due to the disruption of their flow caused by shallow water. The motion of the waves is largely independent of the motion of the majority of the water column, which is tiny even in a massive hurricane.
That's a good thing, because even a small vertical displacement of the entire water column is far more devastating than the biggest storm driven waves - such whole column phenomena are called 'tsunamis', and while they have very little impact on shipping in deep water, their impact on making landfall is truly scary.
Go to the beach on any day with an offshore wind, and you will still see waves 'coming ashore'. Wind speed counts. Wind direction, not so much.
There is almost no wind related rotary water current in the ocean, even under a huge cyclone. Rotary ocean currents are on a much larger scale, and they affect the atmosphere FAR more thsn the atmosphere affects them.
Cyclonic storm surges, like tides, are amplified by shallow water. The storm surge due to the low pressure 'bulge' under a cyclone approaching the coast is no more reduced by offshore winds than the tidal bulge due to the moon is reduced by the moon moving away from the coast rather than towards it. Tides are no smaller on the west coast of a landmass than on the east.
