Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 18 Transcript - 2004 Part 4 / 8

Note: This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.

welcome to another Edition another chapter of stories from the hurricane Highway it is December 25th 2019. hope you're having a great Christmas with you and yours uh here in the southeast United States it is nice and mild and this Christmas so that's good 30 years ago we had like 12 to 15 inches of snow on the ground back in 1989 Believe It or Not yep we had a big blizzard here in southeast North Carolina and somebody like me of course I loved that that was a lot of fun uh nothing like that since then though it's kind of rare to have it snow much around these parts but I digress this is the fourth chapter of these stories from the hurricane Highway podcast series and tonight we're going to look back at the year 1998 another pivotal year a developmental year for my career and we add one more hurricane to the pile uh now I will have been in um after 1998 I believe that would make it three hurricanes I was in Bertha in 1996 I was in the eye of Hurricane Fran in 1996 we had nothing in 1997 to speak of certainly not in the Carolinas and then in 1998 that hurricane of course was Bonnie which we will get to in just a moment so when I last uh left you guys we were talking about my work with the city of Wilmington uh doing mapping in their GIS Department of course I had done hurricane tracking charts in 1997 for the Wilmington Market as well as Raleigh and Chapel Hill and Goldsboro with the Curtis Media Group and it was all very successful we had the beginnings of this project impact initiative from FEMA that would put seed money in New Hanover County and this was really going to open the door for me in a very very special and big way and that is part of what we will discuss in tonight's chapter moving right along um 1998 so the year started and I was an employee at the city of Wilmington in their mapping Department I was helping to update their parcels and input information into their geographic information system and then I would go out into the field and verify different Parcels um yeah it was okay it was a good group of people they all knew very much about my ambitions and my interest in weather and hurricanes some of them probably even had one of my hurricane tracking charts and I knew this was probably a temporary job as well and I really wanted to move forward with becoming a full-time entrepreneur and so you know here's a little bit of a spoiler 1998 this is like if I ever get to the point legendary enough or whatever that uh there's Trivial Pursuit questions about me I mean I know I'm you know that's silly but here's a trivia question for you here's the answer the last year that I worked for somebody else you know punching a time card or whatever as I say working for the man was 1998 that was it after that year and starting that year I went full time whatever that means uh to be working for myself so to speak although as you know you never really work for yourself you're still working for the people it's like you guys I work for you you are all the people that I work for but we're all in it together you know how it works now but back then I just didn't want to work somewhere eight to five punch a time card come in move my rocks you know like Fred Flintstone and then punch out that's just not what I wanted to do and so I I made sure of that starting in 1998. so as the spring progressed there was a meeting in downtown Wilmington New Hanover County Department of Emergency Management led by Dan Summers back in the day as well as city leaders County leaders the county manager uh the mayor several large business entities at T Harris Teeter Grocery Stores Carolina Power and Light which is now of course Duke Energy and New Hanover Regional Medical Center the State Port GE Corning the very very big Employers in Wilmington UNC Wilmington the college here we all got together for this big kickoff meeting in a in this event to really roll out project impact to the community this was in the spring of 1998 and at the same time I had begun work laying out a mock-up of what I wanted the 1998 edition of my hurricane tracking chart to look like we actually call it a hurricane tracking poster by the way back in the day it was not a chart it was a freaking poster because it was huge remember it's 28 by 40 inches so uh we had this big meeting and um I was invited to speak and sort of unveil the Next Generation we're going to move up to full color I had worked with this guy this guy Dan Higgins at Higgins offset and thermography and um that's a local printing shop he helped with the graphic design and he was teaching me also along the way I was learning through his apprenticeship really you know I was his Apprentice unbeknowing to him I mean he was it was just by default I paid so much attention that I was learning about 300 DPI artwork full color CMYK printing Etc you know typefaces fonts logo placement pagemaker Photoshop illustrator and all of this was on a Mac I was learning this on Dan's Macintosh still as the producer and the director of this project I would look over his shoulder and okay let's put this here slide that up a little can we make that red or green you know I was still looking over his shoulder but I was still at the same time learning a lot and so at this meeting in the spring of 1998 I had this nice 28 by 40 mock-up of what the new tracking poster was going to look like for 1998 and it was going to go full color what we call CMYK Four Color process full color which meant we could do a whole lot more than ever before obviously so we're going to graduate from using two colors red and blue on white paper to full color processing what they call Four Color processing CMYK and boy the uh the audience was just very impressed very eager to work with me uh so literally after that my presentation and after the meeting was over several local businesses came up gave me the business cards wanted to do business with me get involved in this whole idea of public-private partnership to build a disaster resistant community and so I was going to work with New Hanover County and I was going to work with these local businesses and the media in Wilmington again it was waav which was now going to be part of a larger radio group called cumulus broadcasting cumulus is a radio group they bought up a bunch of properties around the southeast and I was also going to expand drum roll please into television yeah um I uh got in touch with the TV station in Charlotte um WCNC I believe it is the NBC affiliate in Charlotte and wavy wavy Channel 10 in Portsmouth Virginia as well as I think that it was wciv Channel 4 down in Charleston if memory serves you think I'd remember all this that's a long time ago um and they all and so remember I had this franchise method of doing things so to speak where I would contact the director of sales or the sales manager or the news director in the the meteorologist here's my idea your station whether it's radio or television would have the exclusive hurricane tracking poster produced by me in your Market you go get the advertisers and here here's how much I'm going to charge you to do it period and they either said yes or no and they all said yes it's like whoa so now I am in southeast Virginia the triangle of North Carolina with the Curtis Media Group Charlotte North Carolina with the NBC affiliate and Wilmington with cumulus and wave radio and Charleston South Carolina and I produced I can't even remember hundreds of thousands of maps that year uh and my gosh it was so exciting because each area the front of the map was basically the same the poster it's a huge tracking chart and then it would have advertisements around the perimeter and then on the back you'd have this 28 by 40 piece of real estate that you could fill with information remember we talked about that all the way back to you know the first couple of years I started my business I had all that paper to work with so this was not a pamphlet or a three panel brochure this was a huge poster and so if it was Charlotte I was able to address Inland issues flash flooding Hurricane Hugo a historical perspective mitigation was a big key to all of this how do you mitigate damage Inland you know trimming your trees I mean I really put a lot of effort into tailoring the poster the tracking chart for each community and that really made a difference we're going full color so I would even go out and I would take pictures of examples of mitigation air conditioning units being elevated you know several feet above the beach different measures people could take propane tanks being secured properly and elevated how you secure and mitigate damage to Marine interest your boat okay your jet ski whatever the case may be and I was really like on fire with this um it was like it was the Golden Age it really was it was the beginning of it that's for sure and I was really in my own you know I was like I was I was allowed to be free to just go forward with this and so by late spring early summer I was able to quit at the city of Wilmington you know submitted my resignation I'm like look I'm gonna pursue this full time and that's what I did I sure did I don't remember exactly how much money I made but I was making decent money um from these clients these Media Partners and the businesses Etc I mean it was so remarkable I felt so lucky to be able to really do this and to put my early years of hurricane information knowledge in my head that I learned at school and through a couple of events with Bertha and Fran in 1996 but really it was that passion in my drive and my deep interest at educating the public in a way that was different that would leave a lasting impression that went beyond the typical information that was being put out there so those maps all went to press we had like I said hundreds of thousands of them out there uh really really a remarkable time and then we got into the summer of 1998 and not much activity until late August and uh lo and behold um there was a hurricane coming and I had this is a funny story here how all this works in 97 like I said I had my first son my first child Nathan was born and I didn't make much money and I had a lot of college debt and so I wasn't doing very well you know and my wife was working full time and so I surrendered my car and uh just didn't pay for it anymore I had a Nissan Sentra and I'm like yeah okay well I just I won't need a car my wife is the one that goes to work I'm going to work at home and so that's kind of what I did and so I let him repossess my car and um yeah whatever so and this is important you'll see and it's not a sob story at all it's just the way it is you know I got in over my head as a college student with too much debt it's real easy to do and I just didn't need a 379 a month car payment I guess uh and the insurance on the car Etc so I let them come pick it up I don't remember when it was exactly doesn't matter but I I was you know vehicle-less uh for the most part but then in an interesting thing in um 98 Here Comes Bonnie hurricane Bonnie second name storm of the season and it was coming right at the Carolinas it seemed it looked like this is going to be a big deal now remember I had a Gateway 2000 computer so I was able to keep on top of things a lot more than I had ever done before I could read the National Hurricane Center advisories back when um the forecast discussion would say at the top of it I think it's what it said at the top for intergovernmental use only I don't remember what year they quit doing that I'm pretty sure it was still there in 1998. it was supposed to be not top secret but it wasn't meant the discussion was not meant to go out to the public that's what the public advisory is for but anyway so bahani's coming and I had a little bit of a presence on social media at the time there was some social media all the way back in the day in the form of these this something called geocities you guys remember that geocities and so you'd have it was kind of like an early version of Myspace or what we now know is Facebook you can have your own corner of the internet at geocities and whatever interest you had if you were into music if you're into you know weather uh whatever it didn't matter you could have your own kind of space out there and I was on geocities it was kind of like the hurricane guy or something I don't know and you meet other people and I it's funny because I don't recall as much as I've thought about it over the past 21 years exactly how I met this guy but there was a student at UNC Charlotte who was an atmospheric science and meteorology by the name of Jamie Arnold and he and I had a common interest with hurricanes and somehow knew that I wanted to go into hurricanes Chase hurricanes whatever you want to call it and so as Bonnie was coming he said I'd like to come down and help you you know and again it's so like I wish I had found those emails from long ago to try to figure out how did all this happen but it did and so Jamie came to Wilmington and we we're going to use his truck he had a little pickup truck um I can't remember I think it was a Chevy pickup and we were going to ride around because I told him I don't have a car and um so uh I was gonna use my wife's car and she drove here you go hope you're sitting down she drove a little pink Hyundai Accent true story is a um I think that it was manual shift right uh so you had to have a stick shift so the little pink Hyundai Accent and I remember I took her to work and she was gonna have to be at work for the duration that's what they do is lockdown procedure whatever so she's gonna be there for a few days as this hurricane was coming and it was a real big deal because we had project impact everybody is like hyper aware we've got this movement afoot to be more disaster resistant let's see what we learned and applied since Bertha and Fran so here comes Bonnie everybody's all hands on deck business industry media Emergency Management and Mark you know so I went down to the emergency management office the EOC um documented a little bit here and there and I drove everywhere I needed to go until Jamie got to town in my wife's pink Hyundai and I had a Davis weather station remember in the chapter in 1996 when I talked about that I took my weather station down to Wrightsville Beach to the drawbridge and held it up and that's the first picture taken ever of me doing what I do and that is the logo for Mark's out of the Productions that's the picture that weather station stayed on my house we my wife and I and our baby Nathan lived in Leland and um and and so I drove her car everywhere what I was going to do is I was going to take the uh I'm trying to remember exactly she didn't work that's right because I was not going to stay home with a baby duh um I think she rented something or I rented something and she was going to go ahead and take off and I was going to keep the Hyundai that's what it was sorry I told you this is all shooting from the hip just like we're sitting around recalling my life and in the hurricane World anyway that's what it was she wasn't working she was going to be off and she was going to take Nathan in a rental we got like a rent a van I remember that I even have video of him um and they were going to evacuate in Greensboro and uh just head up there so I had the pink Hyundai so anywhere I needed to go I was in the pink Hyundai and I even thought about taking the weather station and drilling holes in the top of the Hyundai to fasten some u-bolts or clamps or something and try to attach a PVC pipe to my wife's car to get anemometer readings that's how weather geek Desperate I was back in the day and I didn't have a drill thank goodness it would do it and I gave up so anyway not long after Jamie shows up and he and I drove around and documented hurricane Bonnie um we drove you know down to Wrightsville Beach we had a a pass from New Hanover County Emergency Management to do so we would you know gather information pressure readings whenever we could I had a barometer at least could take that with me and then we would be able to call in anything that we saw any reports I could phone it in to them or the National Weather Service and be kind of like a spotter so I had permission in in Jamie Arnold's truck we could go wherever we wanted Excuse me while I get some water I'm still got a little bit of a cold here I don't know if you can notice but just a slight cold this fine Christmas Day so I keep the water handy um oh that's good nice ice cold water nothing beats it so Jamie and I go all around hurricane Bonnie comes up and it's a big deal you know like I said everybody was talking about it and um the beaches were evacuated you know it was a category three major hurricane again for the Cape Fear area and sure enough it made landfall right along the Cape Fear Coast um pretty substantial damage along the beaches but then it did you know a stall stalled out over eastern North Carolina Southeast North Carolina and it rained and rained and rained so it was a big flood event and um you know that was it was we drove in an eye of the out in and out of the eye of it I remember that Jamie and I we drove down into Brunswick County drove into the eye we're able to leave the eye come back up and then the thing wobbled up towards Pender County and drove into the eye in Pender County um and we were real lucky you know now that I know what I know I mean driving around in a category two or three hurricane is not very smart but you know you either get really lucky or you live long enough to learn how to do it right and I guess I did both but uh we did we captured some great data took some good video um phoned in information to the National Weather Service to the New Hanover County Emergency Operations Center and it was it was a success it was like a fully documented hurricane from my perspective and I thought wow you know this just keeps happening here in North Carolina I'm never going to have to go anywhere so after Bonnie came and went Jamie and I hit it off for a well you know maybe we can do this in the future sure sounds good so I also thought I need a name for this you know not just well I'm Mark sudath and I chase hurricanes we got to have like a group name everything has a name or an acronym NASA Noah you know the NBA the NFL everything everything that's cool has a name and an acronym associated with it right so that's what I did after Bonnie I thought you know what's the name gonna be and I came up with the hurricane intercept research team h-i-r-t hurt hurricane intercept research team I'm like you and I will be the founding members whatever and there you go so he went on back to Charlotte and continued on with his studies of course now Jamie if you didn't know this works at wmbf I think it is wmbf and he is in Myrtle Beach South Carolina at wmbf um and he's a meteorologist there been there for quite a while he's married uh I don't know I've got a couple kids I believe a good family man very well um respected there and he is the chief meteorologist he is he's you know been there ever since he graduated I guess he probably started somewhere and moved up but he is the chief met at wmbf in Myrtle Beach how about that and he and I got our start together and hurricane Bonnie on the uh Southeast North Carolina coast back in 1998 so then Along Comes Georges Hurricane George it's George with an S George I guess it's French but um and of course it you know ravaged Puerto Rico the eye the core went right down the spine of Puerto Rico and headed up towards the Florida Keys and you guys will never know how bad I wanted to be down there are you kidding me it was so painful to not have the means to do that you know the money to go the infrastructure that I would need a car an armored car whatever you know there was just no way to do it so I had to watch it on the Weather Channel which you know hey that was the next best thing right in the Weather Channel and CNN they sent Jeff flock out CNN did of course the Weather Channel with Jim Cantore and their vast field crew always knocking it out of the park for Hurricane coverage so I watched it that way and um and then of course it came on into the Gulf and it made landfall it scared the heck out of New Orleans and they had the whole um debacle of trying to evacuate people into the Superdome and people were tearing up seats and yeah just was this big mess which big hurricanes tend to do that and it made landfall along the Gulf Coast and I wasn't there for that it was so utterly frustrating because I really wanted to continue this field work learning more about what hurricanes do and that's what I was really starting to understand after being through Bertha Fran and now Bonnie all in my hometown and in my home region anyway you know it was not the thrill of it you know that oh I want to go out and stand in 100 mile per hour wind and it's not marked versus the Hurricanes this is no you know it's it was about the science and the understanding of what they do and how they do it how does all of this damage that we know happens happen how does it work and I really wanted to understand that it was so frustrating to not be able to just go at a moment's notice in B in hurricanes and you know I had no idea about what was to come 20 years later you know with technology of course I didn't back then you were lucky to have a video camera I had a high camcorder we talked about that in a couple episodes back chapters uh sorry keep forgetting this is all chapters not episodes but I guess they can enter you can use those terms interchangeably but yeah I mean I had a camcorder uh Davis weather station and a pink Hyundai that belonged to my wife so I had to watch George from the sidelines but um you know 98 ended uh on a very positive note for my business I made more money and with you know money is what makes the world go round that's the the painful truth here the that's the way it goes and so yes I was earning money we had you know our son Nathan and it turns out uh by the end of 1998 we figured out it's funny how that happens you just you know the the stork delivers the mail or whatever oh you're gonna have another kid this time in May of 1999 uh but that's in 1999 we'll get to that uh next week but I finished the year way ahead of where I began in 98. I was my own boss I was doing my own projects I knew a lot more about computers from this extremely generous um tutor whatever you want to call him you know Dan Higgins at uh Higgins offset there that I talked about him teaching me what I needed to do to do this on my own would be absolutely game changing for the future that eventually I would take it over and do it myself especially as my projects got bigger and bigger so project impact continued and it gained traction my visibility within the community and in emergency management and elsewhere went up it was still a tough nut to crack though with people that really didn't know me that well and heard about my ambitions for tracking hurricanes in person or chasing them I hate that term but you know there were still those that had doubts you know no that's very dangerous um you know you're you're going to get hurt you're going to put yourself In Harm's Way I mean they always had good intentions but I don't think and it's hard when you're just starting out you don't just come out with unless you're a PhD I guess right if I was Dr Mark sarath from you know FSU with a degree in meteorology I probably would pay attention I I get that so you have to earn The credibility and I'm not saying you don't earn it if you get a PhD but you know it you can't boil down 20 years of hurricane field experience in a classroom over four to six or eight years if you get a masters and then finally a doctorate you can't and I don't care any PhD out there who has not been in 20 years worth of hurricanes doesn't understand everything there is to know about hurricanes by far and I think that's just logic and so it also works the other way that no matter how much ambition and passion and drive I had you have to earn it one year at a time one hurricane season at a time one event at a time and so that's what I was learning I don't want to say the hard way but it was difficult not to be able to just walk into somebody's office and as much as I wanted them to say oh man it's Mark seventh as if Jim Cantore walked in everybody knew who he was or Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center of course I can't remember he came on after the 90s but you know what I'm saying my reputation did not quite precede me yet it was getting there and there would be some big changes in 1999 some events and some amazing things that would make that change in in my benefit in my favor but it was isn't there yet you had to earn it and so as a young entrepreneur with all this passion and all this energy trust me it is a very difficult thing to be patient to be patient to sit there and let time go by and learn over time evolve over time and not only do you have to be patient but you have to be persistent and not give up and any hardships that came along and there was only a handful back in the early parts of my career I mean I obviously did it in the right place pure luck right graduated from UNC Wilmington Hurricanes started coming back 96 98 we're up to three in a row well not counting 97 but you get what I'm saying we had Bertha Fran and now Bonnie so things were you know starting to really point in the direction that Mark was going to have a very interesting and successful career but again it's hard to to understand that the future will come soon enough and I guess you got to be careful not to rush things because then you sit around and go man I wish everything could slow down it just it's weird how that works isn't it so we ended 1998 on a very very positive note uh my wife and I would be looking forward to the birth of our second son in May of 1999 we'll get to that like I said in next week's episode all right so there you go that is it for this chapter of stories from the hurricane Highway a look back at 1998 very interesting uh year again you know met Jamie Arnold who's now of course like I said down at wmbf my work with the Emergency Management Community all of this building blocks all of this coming together the framework was being set for um to the moment when we'll get to this next week that 1999 would become this Benchmark Year all these other years were kind of anchors along the way the 99 as we'll talk about next week truly became a benchmark year and we will discuss that next week all right thanks as always for tuning in again I wish you and yours a very wonderful happy Merry Christmas um your support your patronage here on patreon and the hurricane track Insider group some of you have been members and supporters for more than 10 years are you kidding me that's incredible and I am very humbled and blessed and thankful for that every single day uh and it's just wonderful to be able to sit here and talk to you and that's what I decided back in the summer when things were really looking good for patreon this year and it really grew I thought you know I am going to do something special for these folks who have done so much for me that giving them this insight into my early career and then as you'll see as things go on over the next few years as this podcast grows the later parts of my career I wanted to make sure I did something really special and this is truly not available anywhere else I don't publish it on YouTube it's not going to be on Google podcast or apple anything like that it's only through patreon and our hurricane track Insider site for those that are not on patreon and can't access it through the app it's just a very special way for me to say thank you back for supporting what I am doing so thank you very much again um have a great rest of your Christmas it's uh almost eight o'clock Eastern as I finish this up so let's see a week from now today is the 25th so we will be into let's see it's the 25th plus six would be the third it'll be about January 1st a week from now right all right I was never good at math clearly so anyway I am Mark set of hurricane track.com as always I appreciate you tuning in to the stories from the hurricane Highway podcast I will talk to you again on the first day of 2020.