>> [music] >> Hello again and welcome to another edition of Stories from the Hurricane Highway. A brand new season, a brand new edition of the podcast and the start of season 6. I am of course your host Mark Sudith. Great to have you along with me. As we do, we start this new season, our sixth season of doing this podcast. We're going to wrap up 2017 and that's where we left off and begin 2018 and really beginning this new era
of new cameras, a new way of funding what we're doing, new partners that we're going to meet along the way, new adventures, new stories, new challenges, all kinds of amazing things here of course in this sixth season which will take us through the years 2018,
2019, and then we'll be done with season 6 with those two years because believe me, there is plenty to cover in just those two very busy years. That'll wrap up the sixth season and we'll start season 7 and uh that'll begin with it's almost like its own season really with the totally unbelievable year of 2020 just to kind of give you a little bit of a compass as to where we are headed with this podcast series. First of all, huge thank you to everybody for supporting this over the last six seasons, several years now that we've been doing this. Most of that support coming through Patreon and that is where just about everybody listens to this podcast from. That's the platform Patreon. And uh I really appreciate your support to make it all possible. Now, let's get right back into where we left off. Of course, we finished up with the 2017 hurricane season and that ended the major hurricane landfall drought for the United States. That was Harvey. But we weren't done there. Of course, we had Irma, we had Maria, which affected Puerto Rico, of course, and a very, very impactful season. So, just to recap it for you, that season, 2017, we had 17 total name storms. 10 hurricanes formed
from those 17 name storms. And six of those 10 hurricanes, a whopping 60%, that's easy math, were major hurricanes. And most of the damage of course was from Harvey and then Irma and Maria. We also had that year Nate that made landfall along the north central Gulf Coast in Mississippi. And we launched our weather balloon Herby into the eye of Nate. Even though it was at night, it still worked. It still counts. We are the first and only people to ever do that. Our group, it was myself and Carrie and Todd. And uh we had other people that came along to help out. This gentleman Mitchell who was at the University of South Alabama and uh we had accomplished quite a bit. We were really putting into use these Logitech cameras and they had been doing really well for a couple seasons now. Really putting them into employ
16 and 17. But now we were starting to
use at least more uh two different types of cameras here. Uh a GoPro, remember that? During Hurricane Nate, because of the failure of the terrestrial network during Irma, we had to come up with some kind of a backup plan for our camera systems. And so I uh put to use a GoPro Hero 4, figured out, you know, well, if we set it up on time lapse, it doesn't get quite as hot cuz it's just taking one picture every 5 seconds. And you can string together a very high definition
uh I don't remember even how big those pictures are, but it's basically stop motion animation of the hurricane. And in this case, it was Hurricane Nate, but it worked. And we had this tremendous time lapse of the storm surge coming into Gulfport, Mississippi at the small craft harbor. And just a lot of momentum going into 2018 as we exited 2017. I did go down to the Florida Keys to pick up the equipment from Hurricane Irma. I had left it all down there. Couldn't get it. I mean, the place was a wreck. So, it took a while to go back. I did that I think in October of 17 and we were really looking forward to um
you know an even bigger and better overall technologically advanced way of doing things in 2018 no matter what the hurricane season would bring. We wanted to make sure we were prepared. So we had the GoPro and I was going to do more with that. I'll talk about that as we move through this episode. should title this episode something like I'll I'll think about it but something like um the dawn of new tech or something I don't know because we were we were going to move away from the trusted Logitech cams
and pretty quickly transition into using an entirely new different camera uh new and different camera which I'll I'll talk to you about. I'll tell you all about it. Uh, so yeah, we wrap things up at the end of 2017 and I was just going through the old Twitter timeline there, which is always a lot of fun. Gives me a good framework of all the different things that I was posting and discussing, things that were on my mind topically, whatever. Um, and uh, let me just see if I get everything to reload here in my web browser. Some days everything works great, some days not so much. But here we are at the beginning uh of December 2017 and we can
basically, you know, we wrap up the end of hurricane season. Obviously, November 30th was the last day and we had a lot of talk about our Herby project and how all how well that went. Um, and we were preparing different slides from it, different data sets. A good friend of the project, Tim Bruno, was helping with that. uh Michael Watkins as well. I was already planning ahead for the conference season, especially the National Tropical Weather Conference, which would be in the springtime of 2018, being able to debut this data and show what kind of data data data whatever did we capture up there in the upper atmosphere as Nate was transitioning from purely tropical to extrropical. and what kind of video were we able to see even though it was dark, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, again, just a lot of momentum, a lot of positivity as we uh moved forward on into 2018. So, just kind of scrolling through my Twitter here uh at the end of 17, December 1st
through the 5th roughly. Um, so this is an interesting post here. Again, I like that this is all still there. It's It's very much appreciated that everybody at uh the new Twitter and you know what letter of the alphabet they call it. I swear I'll never refer to it as that. It's just no offense. It's just it's Twitter. Anyway, I'm glad that's all archived. I do appreciate the the Twitter team still doing that because I have this really cool tweet or post that I made way back on December 6th 19
2017 almost did the December 7th 1941 I
mean because that's just etched in all of our minds right well this was etched in my mind December 6th 2017
not 19 anything um I said Here, this is
the post. Irony. I'm at the checkout at Harris Teter. That's a grocery store. And the young man cashier asks about my hurricane track t-shirt. Now, let me stop myself. First of all, it must have been warm enough on December 6. Yo could infer that. Maybe sometimes I'm pretty defiant even when it's cold. But it must have been pretty warm for me to wear a t-shirt. Anyway, the young man cashier asks about my hurricane track t-shirt. I explain in 30 seconds or less the deal behind it, if you can believe that. I did apparently because you don't want to stand at checkout and just yammer on and on. So I explain to him in 30 seconds or less the whole thing about hurricane track and point out that Harris Teter was one of my first clients. And cuz what I did is I told him, "Oh, a long time ago, uh, several decades, whatever, 20 something years, 30 years, whatever the heck it was, I started a company where we did maps, and now I do education and field work and media appearances." And, you know, back in 17, I must have done a pretty good job of giving the guy the Cliff's Notes version very quickly in line at Harris ter. But here is the irony, ladies and gentlemen. Um, so back when I started my entire career in '9596, Harris Teter was one of my first clients ever and that's when I was doing these paper hurricane maps and handing them out by the thousands and Harris Teter was one of our sponsors. So as I told the guy this, a gentleman next to me, I didn't notice because I usually don't, you know, stare at the people behind me, I guess. Just as I told this fella, this youngster that story that Harris Teter was one of my first clients, the guy who said yes to all of that way back in 1996 steps in and says hello. And and it says he's retired now. Um, I can't remember if you can believe this because I remember so much who that was off the top of my head, but I remember this moment that there I was talking to this kid, this young man, and hey, what's up with the hurricane track shirt? What is that? And as I explained it, there's the guy, you know, that was the yes man. Um cuz I had to do a pitch and it was somebody in like regional management at Harris ter in 1996. probably 95 was when I first set it up and then it took some time getting into 96 and uh I knew I was going to do this first mapping project and uh the guy who initially green lit
Harris Teter funding my early work in hurricane education anyway happened to be standing in the same line as me while I told this young man that story. That ladies and gentlemen is the definition of irony. All right, how about that? So, moving on along. Um, what else? So, apparently also on December 6th, 2017, is it 6th or December 6th? How do you say it? It's just funny. Uh, apparently Twitter had a new double the character deal. Um, because I'm talking about that. But it said, "By the way, that story, that short story is why I dig Twitter's new 2x character deal. Sometimes short stories are warranted, whatever that means." I don't know why I posted that, but it jumped out at me. So, there it was. All right, moving on along up through uh some of these other posts here on the Twitter. I was working on my documentary. We're up to about December 10th, the Tracking the Hurricanes 2017 for the fans of it that were out there. and I've got a few. Always appreciate that. It was highly anticipated and uh I was very excited to put it together. Um and yeah, I was working on that as we got into early December there. People were asking about it and I was looking at different Google Street Views and maps and plan view satellite shots and whatever. I'm just going through my Twitter here and just different stuff pops up, I guess. Um what else? um
communicating sort of back and forth with different people that I knew and know at the Weather Channel. Um Dave Clark who used to be the president of the Weather Channel and Tom uh Tom Lee uh who's not no longer there either. He's since retired, but in 2017 they weren't. And I was tweeting back it and for back and forth with them again just kind of going through all this because it's useful for things like this. We get up to the 13th of December and Dr. Phil Clotsbach puts out the very first forecast for the 2018 season, which will
be the very first picture image that I save. And you can hear the clicking of the mouse probably. Um, we'll call this number one. There we go. Uh, so yo know, when I refer to images and whatever and you're able to jump on Discord or get on Patreon and see the pictures that accompany this audio podcast, this helps. So, this is picture number one. What is it? It is the summation of the five bullet points from Dr. Clotsbox 2018 outlook. And uh there
were basically five scenarios. 25% chance that the Atlantic multi-deadeal oscillation becomes very strong in 2018 with no El Nino resulting in an ace of more than 170. 25% chance of that.
Second scenario, AMO is above average and no El Nino ace of 130 35%. So that's
the big winner just to tell you 25 for an ace of 170 35% chance of ace of 130.
AMO is above average and an El Nino develops. Ace of 80 20% chance. AMO is
below average. No El Nino occurs. 80 ace
15%. It's interesting how they both sort of stay the same ace-wise, but we get there for different reasons. the Atlantic multi-deadal oscillation. The way the Atlantic warms, es and flows for its warmth over the decades, that's what that means. And then number five, amo below average and an El Nino develops ace of around 50. I mean, some hurricanes produce 50 easily. Well, not too easy, but it does happen. Uh, anyway, that was a 5% chance. So, the winner again early on here was 35% chance. So the highest likelihood even though it was only 35% was that we would have a warm Atlantic. That's what above average means. And uh no El Nino and an ACE of around 130. Now no cheating. Don't go look at the 2018 stats and yo might already have them off the top of your head and that's fine. I can't tell you to unremember them. But yeah, we'll wait and get there. We'll we'll figure out how it all ended up later. This is the first outlook if you will and I called it the keys to the game and this particular graphic that I had screenshotted and posted on Twitter. That is our first image of this episode. All right. All right. And also on the 13th I said, "Have you seen the latest sea surface temperature anomalies for the Atlantic? Very warm almost everywhere." And of course this this is December now. We'll see if it holds. No way to predict whether or not it will. Climate models generally stink. That's a good way to put it. This far out. All right, moving on along. Um, so we had uh a meteor shower that was coming up the Geminids around that time coming out of the constellation Gemini. And you know what? I'll post a picture here for you from this as well. This is the 14th. I had put my GoPro Hero4
in nightlapse mode and I stuck it out in the yard here at my house in Wilmington and I got a pretty good picture of a geminid meteor. It just looks like a
um like a needle. You you'll see like a silver needle on a black background with some dots. Take a look. Picture number two. That, my friends, is a geminid meteor caught by a GoPro. Hard to do because a GoPro is not your typical DSLR. Not not even close. But it it's similar, I guess. You know, sort of a cousin to a digital single lens reflex camera, you know, like a Nikon or a Canon where you have a much larger uh imager and you can leave the shutter open and just the optics are better. But the GoPro did good. It did well. It did good. and it did well and I got one geminid there. Um, so let's see what else. It looks like on the 15th I was talking about the 8 to 14 day temperature outlook and it was going to be much above average for the southeast as we got towards Christmas which was 10 days away. Fine by me. Uh, you know, I
like winter weather, a blizzard, lake effect snow, whatever. That's fine. Good coastal storm. Um, so cold with impacts
not too negative obviously, but just regular cold and dreary, no thank you. And cold and sunny, that's a huge waste. So any warm, I'll take warm and sunny and even warm and dreary over cold and the opposite of all that. So I uh it looked like I was going to be given that Christmas present from the weather gods um back in 2017 there. So, we kind of wrap up uh December with not um
anything, you know, earthshattering, no big news. Um the forecast, the initial outlook for the 2018 season was out. I did, however, sort of um seed the
future, inform the future, as Mike Watkins likes to say. I love that expression. I've used it a few times here since I learned it from him. My apologies. So, I tweeted here on the 27th that the SOI, that's the Southern Oscillation Index, and it is literally a measure of pressure out in the southwestern tropical Pacific. And basically, when it starts to go negative, that index, you start to lean more towards a pressure pattern that can give you an El Nino. It takes time. It's not overnight. It's not a couple of weeks. It's usually 2 or 3 months or whatever. sometimes longer. And um I was mentioning that, oh, okay, something interesting is showing up here. And here's the post. I said the SOI has lost some ground as of late. Most of the Atlantic basin sea surface temperatures are above average, but we did have Arctic air spilling south, and that's certainly going to mix things up. So, we were going to end 2017 with not any kind of certainty etched in
stone. And of course, when would we ever, right? I mean, we have the potential, it looks like, as I was talking about here, that the El Nino areas could warm a little bit, the Nino areas, as we call them, um, and maybe the Atlantic stays warm, but we weren't sure. But what I was sure of as we get ready to head into the first break here, I was sure that uh we were ending 2017
on probably the highest of spirits overall as a community, the whole
hurricane track family. um my close colleagues, you know, Carrie and Todd and Jesse and Mike, all the different people that I have really come to know and work with over the years, especially these last couple of years. Um, and really with these Logitech cameras and so forth, my partners at the Weather Channel, we were all very enthusiastic about what could happen in 2018. And a lot of that had to do with a camera that was very popular from one
company that got bought by another company and we were going to start to use it in our field work. I'll cover that and much more after our first break here.
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>> All right, back with you now. Stories from the hurricane highway continues and we are up to January 1st. Happy new year. 2018 2018 the biggest year of the project's history as of yet and uh probably even to this day honestly with what's coming. But we got to get there. We got to get to that event uh much later in the year.
One month at a time and several episodes down the road here. But we are we are in 2018 and this is going to be a monumental year. A lot is going to happen and boy oh boy it starts in the month of January right out of the gate. So jumping over onto the Twitter timeline here which will really help to guide me through all of this. There is so much going on in 2018. It's just crazy as I was doing my show prep for this. Looking back through everything. You know I can only remember so much in my brain but the Twitter timeline really helps me to sort of bring it all front and center. And just looking from January through March, I was I was just amazed at, oh, wow, I did all that and we as a project accomplished all those things. Yes, we did. So, let's start in early January here. The pattern looks like it's pretty favorable for some big-time winter storms. And we're going to get one right here in early January. Mid-Atlantic states up into the Northeast. Big- time coastal storm looks like it's coming. It's in the models. Everybody's talking about it, lots of hype, you name it. And I'm going to go cover it. I'm going to take the Tahoe up there with all of its instruments on top and uh over 400,000 miles on that u yo
know, wonderful machinery that that I put into operation way back in 2003. Um it would actually be its last mission. We'll get to that. But um yeah, I'm going to go cover this big winter storm and with that start to test a new camera
system that will eventually become the dominant camera system. So, sort of slowing things down a little bit, let's just do a quick recap of the evolution of the camera systems over the project's history to date up to 2018. In 2005, we
began with these bullet cameras, as they're called, with 60 ft of cable, and you had to run them into a laptop through a digitizer and use Windows Media Encoder with a big old laptop in there, a huge honking battery to power everything, a VCR to record, and it would stream over again Windows Media Encoder, and a very small window with no audio. And it worked. All right, we we know that. That was the start of it all. come along you know 20134 we started using these Logitech cameras these Logitech broadcasters was the literal term through Ustream so now we were doing cloud streaming through Ustream's network and the stream was 16 by9 it had
audio much more variable bit rate all that kind of stuff and in short it was an improvement and the boxes were much much smaller uh basically an oversized lunchbox is a way to describe the second generation of these camera systems and uh those worked really well. Um we started again in 2014 with those 15 16 and through 17. Then in 2017 sometime in the fall there right before Nate um one of our good friends of the project I've known this guy for many many years. His name is Dan McGee. He told me that I might want to look at these Nest cams and uh they were formerly called I think Drop Cam and it was Nest Labs and then I think like Google bought them or something like that. I know eventually they did cuz now it's Nest from Google but he really spoke highly of these and said you can embed them um through a a code that yo get on the back end. You can make them private. you can make them public and it's all on the Nest content delivery network. You pay a small fee each year. Just a lot of advantages. And one of the biggest things is that that he really promoted about it uh Dan did is that these cameras once you set them up with your Wi-Fi system, obviously in our case it would be, you know, pairing them to the hotspots. uh if they go out for any reason and once they come back on, if there is a connection a connection to the internet, the camera will try until the end of time to reconnect to the server. And this was a gigantic advantage over the Logitech cameras, which if as you might recall, um those would give up after a few minutes of losing connectivity. And that's what happened down in Florida during Hurricane Irma. We had these cameras set up from Miami down to the Keys over to Marco Island. Verizon suffered, you know, infrastructure failure down there. Category 4 hurricane, of course, you know, it doesn't surprise me. Uh, and so even if the network came back up, one of the big flaws with the Logitech Broadcaster cams is that after a few minutes, they would just give up trying to reconnect and then that was it. It would just say, yo know, off air. And I talked about that extensively during the Irma saga and just how devastating it was to see that off air. You had a few minutes for it to come back on and then that was it. So, these new Nest Cams that Dana told me about were potentially uh a way around this that they would work better. They had a a wider field of view. I think it's like 140 degrees, so it's a pretty wide angle shot. Um they switch over to nighttime mode automatically. They've got these little lights that what are they like LEDs or something that light up out to about 20, 30, 40 feet. And so I tried one in the
Tahoe during I think for sure Hurricane
Nate as sort of a vehicle cam and just
testing it out. Um we paired it to our Verizon hotspot in the the Tahoe. We were using this other Tahoe that Carrie had bought the project uh for Nate. Already talked about this a little bit, but just to recap. Um, and the camera did pretty well, you know, pretty robust. Uh, and it had a long cable and
it was like USB that you would plug into this transformer thing where you could then plug the camera into a wall outlet, but we didn't want that. We wanted it to be USB powered and they were USBA, yo know, the bigger USB. And so I tested it during Nate as a
vehicle cam and it seemed pretty robust. And so once we got into the off season after 2017 and that big giant mega season we had, I was very busy doing quite a bit of things. Getting ready for conferences, preparing, tracking the hurricanes 2017, and readying this new technology that we would be using, new to us anyway. one was, you know, trying to figure out the GoPros even more and two this new
Nescam as a possibility uh of something that we could put out in the field, but I wasn't sure. So, um, I
was able to, thanks to our Patreon growing a little bit more, a little bit more, you know, during 2017 and, um, just general funds that were available through the growth of the business overall. I purchased one or two, maybe even three, I think I had three Nest Cams that I bought and got a
case for them. this um IM2100 style Pelican case that's um you know quite a bit larger than a lunchbox but still small very toadable and built three boxes out so to speak and um yo
know put the nest cam in there um had like an acrylic lens if you will or covering that I would bolt to the front and then seal with 5200 sealant and the neescam would look out of this portal into the world. Now, it's important to note that the Nescams are weatherproof.
I guess I wouldn't learn this until much much later, but we didn't have to have them behind acrylic, but I did. And I had, you know, mounted them on this little setup and like it was a very interesting way that I set the first ones up. I don't know if I have any pictures of them or not. I'll search for that and if I find them, I'll throw them in on Patreon and on Discord. But the
bottom line was these Nest Cams would sit inside this larger Pelican case. Um, and uh, so think of that case. I want you to get a visual of it. I'm sure there'll be pictures that I'll show you, but it's about the same size as a laptop, you know, length and width, but the thickness of it, it's about, I don't know, 10 inches thick. So again, pretty small. easily. You could carry one on an airplane, no problem. You know, stick many of them in the back of an SUV, whatever. So, far and away, way better than the very first camera systems, which required a foot locker, basically. And so, these were going to be ready, you know, and were ready for 2018. And then lo and behold, to my point here, I was going to start testing them in this January uh east coast storm. Now, these nest cams would be powered by what are called Max Oak, and it's just names that they come up with. These are basically mass-roduced lithium ion battery packs. And these we had been using since 2016 or so, 2015, 16 that Carrie had found.
Um, they are uh 50,000 milliamp hours or
50 amp hour battery packs about the size of a a book like a 6x9 book or something
and um they're 50 amp hours. So they would run these nest cams uh in testing for 2 or 3 days and then of course they need to run the Verizon hotspot as well. So, all of that got packed into these um Pelican cases, these little storm cases, and um they were ready. We had three of them. And I still had my four or five or whatever it was Logitech Ustream Broadcaster Cams. So, now we're up to like five, six, seven camera systems. Three Nest and we'll say four Logitech systems and I'm ready to go. All right. So, that's where we are in early 2018. And lo and behold, I've got an opportunity to go put some of this stuff to the test, and we're going to do so uh in this big winter storm coming up. So, now we're up to January 2nd. There's a lot of talk about this winter storm potentially having snow in Wilmington. And I mean measurable snow, not just, oh, it's snowing out there. Look, yo can see it in the lights and then that's it. Uh, and so that prompted this tweet right here. I said, "There are so many people at Harris Teter grocery store that I think they're going to have to borrow one of those wait time signs from Disney. What exactly are they expecting to happen?" So, I was like, I just wanted stuff for spaghetti. And that was January 2nd. It's cuz everybody was hitting the grocery stores, you know, buying bread and milk. Haha. But yeah,
um, it was busy. people were stocking up, you know, as they always do, and uh we were getting ready for this big big winter storm. So, my thought was for this one um that I would go and set some of these cameras up in North Carolina. In fact, the very first Nescam deployment ever for the
project was going to be not even a mile from my house at a major intersection. And I'll get to that, but that would be the first one. And then I was going to take some more with me uh and and sprinkle them up I 95 and I was going to cover this storm uh in North Carolina and Virginia. All right. So, um I think
let's see. Somebody was asking me about the winter storms I have covered. Um sometimes since Twitter is pretty old now, um some of these tweets are deleted. You know, the account got suspended or the author or whatever. So, I can't see what somebody asked me, but I think they're asking me about how many storms have I covered outside of hurricanes. And I said since 2014, I have certainly been doing so. there's been, you know, more winter storms than hurricanes really. And I said, I think it's been six major winter storms since March of 2014 that I had covered. And just to give yo an idea of how robust a storm this is going to be, the hurricane hunters uh
are going to do winter recon. In fact, I uh screenshotted this and tweeted it, so I'll save it for you. You can take a look. This is picture number three. And this is the recon plan of the day uh from Teal71. And they're going to do these drops for checking uh the storm
and giving the weather models more data for initialization for a winter storm. That's become a thing in modern times. So the hurricane hunters not only do hurricanes, they also do these extrropical storms, these mid- latatitude winter storms as well. Um, and by the third I'm tweeting at my friend Mike Adams who helped out during Irma. A huge help he was going down to the Keys with me. Um, I said, "Hey man, I might be heading your way tonight." This is January 3rd. I said, "It looks rough there for tomorrow. I'll keep yo posted." Um, he is Storm Force One on
the Twitter there in case you want to find him yourself. That's uh he's still around, still doing it. And here's another picture I'll save for you. This is January 3rd. Let's see what time this was. 12:41 p.m. And it's one of those bolts from the blue. This is picture number four off my radar scope. And there's a lightning bolt just sitting out south of Oak Island all by itself as the storm begins to take shape uh off
our coast. You know, that Miller A type track. Some of the energy came across the northern Gulf. And then you have cyclloenesis off the Wilmington, North Carolina area, off our Capes as it's called, and it's off to the races these storms go sometimes. So, I set the first camera up uh the night of January 2nd. I
remember I did it at night cuz I just wanted to be somewhat incognito. And it was literally down on College Road and Martin Luther King Parkway here in Wilmington, not far at all from my house. And I went over to this wooden um
utility pole and had a small ladder and
went up and just kind of put a bracket down first to hold the weight of the camera box. had the neescam running and
I set it up and uh zip tied it to the pole. Um and probably put some bungee cords too. Hadn't quite just yet learned about ratchet straps. I mean, I knew they existed, but we'll get to that. There's a much better method of using ratchet straps coming, and all of that is many episodes down the road here, but we'll get there. Uh but yeah, I had the very first Nest Cam running looking across this intersection diagonally at Martin Luther King and College Road, not far from Corning. And I figured, ah, this is going to be a heck of a shot. So, that's set up and off I go. Uh, I'll take a I'll I'll share this picture with you, too. The tweet associated with this photo, this is picture number five. a soft blanket of clouds on this fine January afternoon somewhere in eastern North Carolina. I was making my way up the highway there. I stopped uh at some point along I 95
near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and I put the second Nest Cam there um on a
utility pole. Uh and then that evening I get up to Virginia Beach area. I meet up with uh Jesse and uh I put a camera down there. I said an empty Virginia Beach is seen by one of my remote camera units. Now, this was one of the Ustream Logitech cameras. So, we're mixing and matching here. But let's see what time I posted that. So, I was in Virginia Beach. This is 9:27. Um and uh Mike from GSB Images said, "Crystal clear exclamation point." I said it's the exact camera unit that was in the eyewall of category 3 Irma just a few months ago. So, it was the same camera unit from Irma for what it's worth. And I remember I met up with Jesse up there and um then I was on to
the north that I would go up into New Jersey. Um and boy oh boy, this storm system was really cranking off of the North Carolina Outer Banks. It looked like a hurricane passing by. the banding and everything. It was snowing down in Wilmington. And I'm gonna tell you, I hate leaving town when we're gonna get snow because it's going to snow farther north, you know, cuz I want to cover the bigger part of the event. Uh, that's just hard cuz I like playing in the snow with my kids and the kid in me comes out, you know, it's just it's just a weird thing. And it was definitely going to snow a couple of inches back in the Wilmington area. Um, but yeah, on up I go into New Jersey and I remember I was um I think I set up one of the nest cams if I'm not mistaken. See, I know I did two Wilmington and then one on Rocky in in Rocky Mount. Um, so I did Virginia Beach and then I put a Ustream cam in Atlantic City. Um, I thought that I had another one somewhere, but maybe not. Anyway, I get out to uh New Jersey down towards the coast, the southeast coast of New Jersey. And uh here's a nice wintry picture that I'll save for you here. It says turtle crossing May through August, next two miles. And that's literally what it says. One of those yellow signs. Picture number six for you. And I uh I said, "But not today." Nope. No turtles today. But a very wintry scene for sure, not too far from Summer's Point in New Jersey. And um do you remember Periscope on Twitter? They had that uh live feature with it's called Periscope that you would just pop up. That was the whole idea of it. And so I tried some of that off the phone I think or something uh driving around in New Jersey down near Summers Point in Maze Landing. Um and it was just a really interesting um
experience. It's very cold, very blustery. Uh, pretty significant winter storm. Um, I guess I had four total cameras running is what it looks like. We had Wilmington, we had the Rocky Mount. Those are the two Nest Cams, and then we had the two um, Logitech cameras running as well. So, I' had I would have had four total. And, uh, went down to Atlantic City. um
you know just covering it basically in person with handheld video posting on social media and whatnot uh from New Jersey. Now here's a great picture. This is January the 4th. Um and we're in this
pattern by the way in early January of 2018 where it is really cold in the east. A deep trough just cold shot after cold shot for sure. And so this is a great picture. Well, it's kind of fuzzy but that's okay. It's a good attempt at a great picture. Put it that way. I'm driving trying to snap the picture uh out the window of the Tahoe there. Um it says it's the Suscuana River and it's frozen. And I said, I guess it's just going to get more so from here. And I saved it for you. Picture number seven. You can see that. Um very blustery up in the far northeast. Uh Dan Dan McGee sent me video from his nest cam from his house in Baiting Hollow as sighting gets pulled off from a big 70 m per hour gust. Um of course he's got weather stations on his house and um yeah, so
I'm up there covering it. We had um really really great uh signals
uh through Verizon obviously for our uh
four cameras. They were working really really well and I tried to get back out of there. It was done. We're up on now up to the 5th of January and it is time for me uh to get on home. So, come out of Jersey and I'm going to go around DC. And I tweeted here this January 4th, getting around Washington DC was absolutely a breeze. I don't think I ever even encountered a slowdown. Yep. So, sometimes, you know, when it when they get snowed in, it's easy to uh get
around DC. So, the blizzard was pretty impactful. Again, this uh Mike Bush fella at GSB Images, um he posted some pictures, just again going through the Twitter timeline here, uh Bport Bay after the blizzard that's up there in New York, and it was definitely a big time blizzard. And then on the 5th of January, this is a great picture. I don't even know how to explain this. This is what, picture number eight. I'll save it here. Um, it's the snow cover after the storm in eastern North Carolina. And you can see one sort of patch of snow, if you will, on the satellite. You'll see when you look at the picture. Uh, that is in eastern South Carolina up through eastern and central sand hill areas of North Carolina and then eastern North Carolina. But then there's this gap uh of no snow. Very, very strange. Lots of people were talking about it on social media. You did you had this hole like carved out whatever that looks like somebody took a gigantic snow plow, yo know, like geologic size, you know what I mean? Like it and there's no snow there. So, you got to see this picture. And I was like, uh, how? I mean, really? It was a very strange situation. I don't remember the explanation for it uh today, but whatever. It's a cool picture. Check that out. And um so uh
it's yeah definitely a snowhole. And I'm trying to see here it pretty sure this is the trip uh where I'm on the way back from
New Jersey and I am Yeah, I I just don't
I guess I didn't post about it for whatever reason. I just want to make sure I get the timeline right here. Uh, I must have kept it quiet. Um, not any particular hiding it or whatever, but I just didn't publicly talk about this. But on the way back from that event in
January, the Tahoe Yeah. I mean, it's got to be that the uh the original Chevy Tahoe with all the weather equipment on it. Um, it already had a bunch of different hazard lights on and, yo know, in check engine. it was just gradually having problems. But being an older Chevy manufactured in 2001,
uh I mean it's going to go until it just can't go any further. And that is what
happened. I was on my way back from this event and the Tahoe um just kind of conked out on me, I guess you could say. And it was somewhere near Richmond that it did so. Um, and it was at night and I
remember just like coming along. I had like 25 miles until I had to get gas again. And I was approaching an interchange and there was one of those TAs, the Travel Centers of America. And I remember the Tahoe like all these warning lights came on the the dash and it just kind of quit, you know, and like the engine died. And so I was able to get off the exit. It was absolutely perfect timing. Came up to the top of the exit, reached the stop sign. It's dead. And I was panicking a little bit like, "Oh, come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on." And I was able to restart it, make the left turn cuz I knew I had to just get over to the TA and uh assess everything. You know, is it the battery? I figured it was the battery, honestly. Uh very cold, a lot of stress on it. you know, all this work I had done covering everything up there, um, in New Jersey, uh, and whatnot. But, uh, yeah, I coasted in to the TA and the engine died again and I was able to park this thing on its own sort of momentum. I got it into a parking place and that was the end. Um, long story short, AAA
came out, took a look at the battery, said the battery is fine. And then, yo know, I was on the phone with Carrie. We got to figure out what to do, whatever. Obviously, I'm not getting home. Yo know, contacted my family. Hey, sorry. Dad's not coming home tonight. Richmond's only like four or five hours, but yep, not happening tonight. So, had the vehicle towed to a Hampton Inn um
just south of Richmond and is like a cheap one, whatever. I I don't remember exactly why. Whatever. Those details probably don't matter too much. and and I would assess everything in the morning, figure out which Chevy dealer to have it towed to because I needed to call around and figure out who could look at it the soonest and so forth. So, I had the Tahoe and I rode with the tow truck guy obviously towed to a Hampton in just south of the greater Richmond area um just south of downtown and uh
got up the next day uh called a couple Chevy dealers and found one that Yeah. you have it towed in and we'll take a look and call AAA again. I remember there was like snow and ice. It was very cold and I'm out there dealing with the AAA fella uh the tow truck and it was just a couple miles away. Towed it into the Chevy dealer and this was pretty early in the morning. I would be staying again that night. So now we're two nights in the Richmond area. Later that afternoon they were like, "Hey, um we know what's going on." I remember I went in and sat there for a bit as they finished up the the diagnostics and they said, "You got a whole bunch of things wrong, but the main thing was the fuel injectors. The whole fuel injection system is shot and you're going to need new fuel injectors and this, that, and the other." And it was like $3,800 or something minimum. And that's just to get the engine stuff going with fuel injection repair. And I had to think about it, you know, I don't have deep pockets for this. Um, you know, like what am I going to do? So, I talked to Carrie, talked a little bit with our the sort of the rest of our our closest core of supporters. And again, I didn't want to put this out there publicly. Oh, something's wrong with the Tahoe, yo know, because I wasn't looking for sympathy, you know, like I wanted to like solve this problem internally and uh go on. like the show must go on. This was not a public issue, you know what I mean? So, I just kept it off of social media. And it kind of dawned on me, yo
know, well, why don't we get the other Tahoe? And just to remind you, the other Tahoe was also an 01 Chevy Tahoe made at
the same exact plant in Texas, probably months apart at at best. Identical. I mean, they were twins. Carrie found it on a rock lot, you know, one of those like Jimmy's Auto or whatever in uh in early 2017,
and it was only $5,000, just short of that. Actually, $49.95. He purchased it on behalf of the team. And um it was, you know, 260,000 mi or 230, whatever it was. Ran like new cuz it had one owner. Uh smelled brand new. like this other Tahoe was in really good shape and and had not been through 20
hurricanes and six winter storms or whatever. So I was like, you know, uh Chevy dealer, I can't remember the name of the dealer. Um if I got the I got this other Tahoe, if my son drives it up here, could you guys just swap the engines? And they looked at that and they said, "Yeah, we could do that. It would be about $1,200 for labor, blah blah blah." And you know, I was like, "Yeah, let's just do that because I want to keep that original Tahoe going." So, that was the plan. I got in touch with my son Cole, uh, who had some time. He was at school at UNC Chapel Hill, and he was going to drive that other Tahoe up and we would do an engine swap. It's like a heart transplant, right? But in the course of the day or so extra that it took all that to transpire to get the the other Tahoe up there from Wilmington to basically Richmond. I thought about it more and I was like and you know again talking with Carrie um just total dead time at the hotel. Nothing to do. I was like you know the original Tahoe has had a good run. It really has. Why don't we just use this new Tahoe, newish, right? The other Tahoe. And it doesn't have all the weather equipment on it. But we really don't need that. I mean, it's nice to have weather data right there in the vehicle. There's a certain showmanship about it. Sure. But yeah, we got these weather stations that we don't need wind towers anymore. Let's just use that Tahoe, the second Tahoe, as the primary vehicle. Why go through all this trouble? You know, the transmission, the in it just Yeah, that doesn't make sense. So, it turned into, hey, Cole, bring the other Tahoe up and give me a ride home, please, and I will I will get the original Tahoe towed home
and that's that. Uh, and I'll figure out what to do with it, maybe donate it, whatever. or we'll get to another really interesting story about all of this as we move along here, but that was the last mission of the original Chevy Tahoe was this early January Blizzard in 2018. And so Cole uh brought my other Tahoe up. I paid whatever it was a couple hundred to the Chevy dealer for the diagnostic work and AAA and here's the thing. It took like two weeks to get the original Tahoe back to Wilmington because I was too cheap to just pay for the additional miles because I had AAA plus and you get 100 miles per toe, but you had to wait some period of time between them and I had like three or four more to go or something like that. I don't remember. But I gamed the system as it were and had the Tahoe towed to Rocky Mount and then I waited a few days or whatever and then it was from Rocky Mount to Wilmington and it was like $36 or whatever instead of two or 300. So that's how I got the the original Tahoe back home. Uh I don't know, it's like 10 days later or something. But that is the story of how the original hurricane track Chevy Tahoe with over 413 or 60
whatever it was. Uh it's in a later tweet that I actually talk about it, but it had well over 400 something thousand miles on it. Uh 20 something hurricanes, all these winter storms, numerous other tropical storms. It was done. It was done. There was not going to be any saving it. it looked like uh and we had put the other Tahoe into operation officially as the uh vehicle for Hurricane Track. So after the break coming up, we'll continue on through. Hey, we're only up to like January 10th or so and it's already one heck of a 2018. We'll continue after the break. [music]
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>> All righty, back with you now. stories from the hurricane highway continuing and we are now pretty much through the first 3rd of January 2018. It has been cold, it has been snowy. I've already been on a pretty big field mission deploying uh a couple of Nest cams, testing those out with great success. Uh also still using the Logitech cameras, but I'm going to tell you their time was limited for sure. Uh,
and we're going to get to all of that, of course. But yeah, it had been pretty active already this first 10 days or so of January. And um, I'm talking about different things on social media, on our YouTube, and Facebook and so forth relating to the upcoming 2018 hurricane season. And the big question was, as it typically is, are we going to have an El Nino, a neutral pattern, or a Leninia in place? And there were some interesting things that were happening even in early January that suggested that maybe the equatorial Pacific 2018 would be warmer than average. So potentially a warm inso event as it's called, but we weren't real sure. So I was talking about that amongst other things. I was also finishing up the tracking the hurricanes 2017 documentary. Very important documentary for me. I really wanted to do the best job I could possibly do on this, you know, covering Harvey, covering Irma, Maria, which I was not in, you know, we talked about that in a previous episode, kind of got the very fringe effects of Maria on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and then of course Nate and the historic uh for us anyway, launching of the weather balloon in the eye of Hurricane Nate. So, I was trying to tie all that together and finish up that documentary through January. I wanted to get it ready by March at the very latest. Uh, because I had some big important things coming up in March. And making these documentaries is very time consuming. I do them all by myself. I enjoy that, by the way. It's not a complaint. And, yo know, got to write it, script it out, block it, get all the different files together, all the elements, do the music. And in the case through 2018 when
I did the tracking the hurricanes series, I would narrate it. So I had to record all of that and then put everything together, do all the sound mixing and stitch it all together and hopefully have a worthwhile program that people would enjoy for generations to come. And that just takes time. Luckily in the off season, I generally have a lot of time. But again, 2018 starting off really, really busy. We had yet another snowstorm, uh, this time all the way down into the Carolinas, uh, again, of course, and, um, not quite to Wilmington, but certainly up into the Sand Hills and the Piedmont, the Triangle area, that is Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill. And so, here it is on January 17th, 2018. I'll share a couple of these pictures for you. These are from my son at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with lots of snow. They even had a big snowball fight. These are pictures nine and 10. And uh they all went down to the stadium there and uh had a huge snowball fight. It was really epic. A lot of um feedback on that tweet that I posted on January 17th from my son and um yeah, it
was pretty wild. Lots of different people again commenting on that. And not to be outdone, my other son who was at NC State at the time sent me a picture from him. I'll share this one with yo as well. He was on his way into work that evening. He at the time was doing some uh nursing work at Wake Med in
Raleigh. This is picture number 11. Snowy and icy out there. not not a good situation overall, but I took advantage of it and went up into the eastern uh
coastal plane area near Rocky Mount. And in this case, I finally do have a snapshot, at least off of Twitter, uh of what the Nest Cam saw. And uh I did I put another Nest Cam out along the side of the road up there along Interstate 95 near Rocky Mount. And it's a pretty good shot. And I was definitely learning more. This is picture number 12 for yo about how well these cameras were going to perform. Um, and so I had yet another deployment. It was it was nice to, yo know, to continue to test these things. Very much what we do a lot of during the off season, testing, testing, and more testing, trying out different ideas, working with each other, talking about stuff to further our project on the
technological side. And we use these winter storms to test these things in the field. I can test them in my garage or out in the backyard all day long, but you know, it's easier uh to do that, sure, but it's more you get more results and you get a better feel for what's going to, you know, be the longevity of these things and, you know, just test them out in a live fire situation, so to speak. So, uh, all of these winter storms were really helping with that. Um, and then just different people chiming in on social media. And um, one person here that I want to mention was a former neighbor of ours. Um, his name is David and he's a veterinarian. I think he's up in Kentucky now. Was from Kentucky, I believe, and I think he moved down to the southeast North Carolina area and then moved back to Kentucky if memory serves. and he was asking about um he saw a post of mine on
Twitter and he was asking about the Tahoe and the Isuzu and all that stuff. And I responded to him. This was sort of my first public acknowledgement that the original Chevy Tahoe there was done. And uh this was on January 17th and I said back to David, first vehicle was an Isuzu rodeo. Yes. Um, and yeah, let me just look in here and see what David had said because it prompted. So, he said, "Oh, running." Oh, yeah. Our running joke is if you see Jim Canour or the hurricane track, run inland immediately. I remember your old tricked out uh was it a rodeo? He was asking. And I said back to him, "Yeah, the first vehicle was an Isuzu rodeo. Lowe's helped me with the Chevy Tahoe in 2003. It just had its last field mission during the January 3rd and fourth winter storm. Time for something new. The Tahoe had 430,000 miles of hurricanes, tropical storms, and winter storms. Cuz
um what he saw was this photo. So I guess you know obviously this David fella follows me on Twitter and he saw my post from my son that I had done the picture I just shared with you all. Picture number 12 I think it is of uh Raleigh and that prompted David to yo know chime in on the Twitter there. That's that's the interaction of social media. It's great. Hadn't seen him in several years at this point. He and his wife and they had a child or two moved away. I think again they moved to Kentucky with their veterary practice. But anyway, that was the first time I kind of put it out there that the Tahoe was finished and we're going to come back to that in a in an important way here as we go forward. Uh and and we'll get there. Some some interesting stuff's going to happen. All right. So, again, I was able to deploy another camera, the Nescam, testing some things out with it. Um, it stayed up through the 18th and I said here on the Twitter, "Watch the sun do its magic on the snow in this time lapse from my nest cam set up alongside I95 near Rocky Mount. These cams are going to be stunning to use during hurricane season." Little did I know, oh yeah, they were going to be absolutely fantastic. And I can't wait to get there. We just got to be patient. It's going to take a few episodes, but boy oh boy, these Nest cams really are going to be the future. It did appear. I was even tagging Google Nest on Twitter trying to get their attention. I mean, that would have been fantastic, but good luck with that. I know, right? Huge company, one of the biggest in the world, Google, that own Nest at this time. But anyway, um different people chiming in about it that yeah, they do really look sharp, uh very steady, so forth and so on, very stable. And um I said to one person that was responding to me, I said, "Thank you. Just getting started using Nest Cams for our unmanned cams project. So far, the results are spectacular. Hope to have six to eight of them in operation for hurricane season." Spoiler alert, we pretty much did exactly that. All right, so moving along here through the Twitter timeline. Uh, some kind of sad news certainly in the weather industry. January 21st, 2018.
A, uh, friend of mine on Twitter. I've never met this gentleman in person. Um he was letting me know that uh his name is Bruce, Bruce Becker. And uh he was letting me know that our friend uh more his than mine because I met this gentleman once and that is John Coleman who started the Weather Channel, part of the group that started the Weather Channel. Um he was letting me know that Mr. Coleman had passed away on that day, that morning on January 21st, 2018. um a legend in the business. Uh Bruce and John Coleman were good friends for many decades before. And uh John Coleman had gone to work in San Diego where there's basically no weather to speak of. And the day that he quit, I think I told this story on a long ago episode. The day that he quit and wanted to let them know that he was retiring, he was speaking at the National Tropical Weather Conference. I think it was either 2014 or 15 and I posted a picture
of it and everything with myself and John Coleman started the Weather Channel, one of the principal people. He during his keynote during the lunchon talked about his career and how he was currently employed at whatever the TV station was in San Diego. And he said, in fact, today is my last day. Does anybody here want to call the news director and let him know that I am retiring? And I thought he was joking and was sitting at the table in this lunchon that we had for this uh keynote and I raised my hand. I like, "Yeah, I'll do it." And he gave me his phone and dialed the number to the TV station and I said, "Okay, what's the guy's name or whatever?" And of course, they were like, "It's a receptionist." Like, "Well, who's calling?" I was like, "Well, this is Mark Sudith on behalf of John Coleman. Uh, well, so and so, whatever the news director's name was, is not available. Uh, can I take a message?" And I said, "Yeah, Mr. Coleman wants me to tell you all he is retiring. Today is his last day." And I hung up and that really happened. It was unbelievable. So, what a what a a legend in the business. Uh, John Coleman um passing away on the 21st of January, 2018. Um we uh certainly miss him in the weather business, but look look at what he started, right? All right, so moving on along. Um we start to round out the month of January, things are generally warmer because the pattern flips, but as we get into February and into March especially, uh things are going to certainly flip back and the winter storms just continue in the east. However, uh we're not done with January just yet. Um, I uh have a post here I
want to share with you. This is fantastic. And I'm just looking at the picture of it. I'm I'm remembering all of this. The Southeast Severe Storm Symposium put on by Mississippi State University um invited me a couple years in a row, maybe three years to speak. And in 2018, I was going to be one of their keynote speakers, which is a great honor. And so
they tweeted it. They said, "Finally, we're happy to welcome Mark Sudith as our fourth keynote speaker for the Severe Storm Symposium 2018. He's the founder of Hurricane Track and a close friend of the Mississippi State University weather program." Indeed, I am. I'm going to share this picture for you that they put together, this little poster, if you will, this ad. And there I am in the Old Tahoe back in I don't know what year this was. Somebody took some pictures of me for the star news or something like that. Um, and uh that's that's the Tahoe. That's the one that was retired. I'm down at uh Fort Fiser in that picture state park to get some photos for the Wilmington Star News long time ago. I don't even remember when that was, but whatever. So, there's the photo. There's the announcement. I'm going to be a keynote um down at Mississippi State come March. So, more
news and people talking about the Tahoe, um, asking about it, so forth and so on. And I said, you know, yeah, I definitely need a new Tahoe now. Actually, the old one finally gave up. This is on January 27th after the big winter storm of January 3rd and 4th. And I know I mentioned this before, but here I am talking about it again because somebody Let's just look and see what they were saying. Um, how does this Oh, yeah. So, I talked about the uh the symposium and how I'll be speaking there. And then someone was talking about, "Are you going to bring the Tahoe or something like that?" And then I said, "Yeah, I need a new Tahoe now." And so forth. 431,000 mi. Never had an issue. That's the That's Chevy for you. Going to have to put it in a museum somewhere. And that kind of started this um interesting thing, I
guess, is the way to put it. Uh that happened. There were people that had followed my work uh for years and years and years that I had never met um that
really appreciated what I did in 2017 with Irma. So that gets me to this story here. So obviously with social media, you know, in the dawn of that, there's a lot of good. We know that there's a lot of bad, uh but there's also a lot of good. And apparently the work that I had done during Irma, especially on YouTube, the YouTube hurricane outlook and discussion videos, all the updates about Irma, all that good stuff, really had an impact on uh a company down in Charleston, South Carolina, that they were very prepared. They were very much in the know. And this was a PR firm. And um I'm going to leave them anonymous because I have not cleared it with them to tell this story. So it'll just be better to kind of leave it anonymous, but it did happen. Why would I make stuff up, right? Anyway, there's this PR firm and they uh had
been watching my YouTube videos uh through the Irma saga and evidently I really helped them decide when they were going to close up and they could wait a little longer, whatever. It just really made a difference in their business. And so when I published the news on Twitter there and I might have even talked about it in a eventual video update on YouTube
that the Tahoe was done. I heard from somebody at this PR firm and they said that first of all they didn't realize
that I was not just rolling in the
money. like they assumed that because the Tahoe was so decked out, so advanced looking like something out of a movie, that my operation seemed to be so slick, everything seemed to run so smooth that I must be wellunded. And I even remember over the years my wife telling me that anytime I would bring her something at work or when we only had one car for some reason and I would pick her up in the Tahoe or whatever that sometimes people at work would tell her, you know, man, I hope you know your husband's truck uh never gets wrecked or something cuz they felt like it must have a million dollars worth of equipment on it. So there was this interesting sort of uh persona, you know, that preceded this reputation, if you will, that preceded me and the hurricane track operation that it was very successful and a big money maker. And at the time, 2017 into 2018, I was doing okay, but nothing could be farther from the truth. It was not this big money maker. I was not a millionaire. You know, the Tahoe was not worth a million dollars. It was a few thousand dollar worth of equipment. But I say all of this because this PR firm and a couple gentlemen that worked there especially were just taken a back that I wasn't going to just replace it, you know, that I'm going to probably need some help. And so they got in touch with me and wanted to talk about maybe
helping me pro bono to promote to
Chevrolet and General Motors getting one donated. So they spent some I actually drove to Charleston and had dinner with these two guys and they spent some time putting together a plan. They worked in the Charleston area first with some different dealers that they knew. And they wanted me to put together a sizzle reel, you know, kind of like a a highlight film, if you will, of uh how the Tahoe has done over the years, different news clips it's been in and so forth and so on. So, I did that. I put some music to it and uh they really did work really hard. Um and we put a big social media campaign out there. they helped to craft some things for me on Facebook and so forth and so on. And over about a two-month period or so, we did this. Um, and to no one's surprise,
I think nobody really bit. For whatever
reason, corporate America just does not support the weather industry broadly until something bad happens. That's kind of how we are in America anyway. We are a reactionary society, not very proactive, right? Mitigation and proactiveness, eh, not our strong suits, admittedly. And it goes for weather. It goes with our health, which is going to certainly come to uh bite me in the rear end later on in 2018. We'll talk about that later. But yes, we are not a very proactive society. And so
Chevrolet, no interest. And even different dealerships, you know, boy, they would have a great we could knock $5,000 off the sticker price, get yo some 2% financing or whatever, but there was going to be no donating a vehicle to me. And I kind of didn't care, you know,
like I cared, but I it didn't upset me. I was a little befuddled, but it didn't surprise me. You know, like corporate America again is just not into the weather like I think they should be. Now, there's been examples where they have been. and I certainly had a good relationship for seven years with Lowe's and Sprint, but even those dropped off. And it's just hard for anybody to convince Fortune 500 companies to sponsor something related to the weather in a big way for whatever reason. And so that's why we have crowdfunding, right? Absolutely. So I figured, you know what? We're going to earn it down the road a piece. I've got Patreon. I've got a great base of uh people, friends of the project, if you will, that I have grown over the years, and let's just roll with that. So, this uh PR firm down in Charleston put a a yman's effort into it, and we just didn't get anything, yo know, in return. Nobody bit, as they say. So, there's that story. All right. So, huge thanks to them if they're listening. You know who you are. Um and hey, look at us now. We are not a million-dollar operation, but boy, we sure look like it even today with a great group of people supporting. Uh, and um, yeah. Anyway, so there's that. Um, also, February 4th was the Super Bowl. I thought I'd mention this cuz it's kind of funny and uh, I put it on social media even though it is personal, like related to the family. So I said, "Okay, so for real, if you're watching the Super Bowl on WECT, which is our local NBC affiliate here in Southeast North Carolina, and you saw the Wilmington Eye commercial, it's a optometrist company." Well, that was my daughter playing football on the beach. Yay, Brillin. So my daughter was in a Super Bowl commercial regionally in Southeast North Carolina. Now, not national. That would be even better, obviously. But just to have her on in a regional DMA, you know, like the market area, the demographic area for WCT during the Super Bowl means a lot of people saw it and I just thought that was cool. So there you go. All right. Now, we're obviously into February and uh different
things are going on. I thought I'd mention this, too, uh because I certainly did on Twitter. You guys remember when SpaceX launched their um what was it? A Falcon 9 or something and it had the Tesla on it? Uh that was around the eighth or ninth somewhere around there. I don't know exactly, but yep, Elon Musk and Tesla, they put that Roadster uh out into space. And I had a
uh I tried to do a meme um that the quote is it's uh like towing, you know, like if you have AAA, the first 100 miles is free, then it's $4 a mile after that. I'm going to save this picture because it's relevant because I had to have my Tahoe towed back. As I told you, this picture number 14 uh from Richmond and it took a couple weeks because I didn't want to pay the $4 per mile. So, whatever. So, yeah, we're up into February and I'm just kind of looking around here through the Twitter to see what was happening in our life uh of uh weather. And hey, February 16th, 78° in Wilmington, North Carolina.
So, yes, the the pattern flipped back and it was getting warm again, staying warm, it looked like. I mean, wow, 78. That would be fantastic. Um, and what else do we have here going up? Oh, yeah. the groundhog. That was obviously on February the 2nd and I think the groundhog was predicting more winter, six more weeks of winter, something like that. Um, and here's a good one. February 20th. Um, I had been working on
stuff for the two conferences that I would be attending in 2018, the Mississippi State Severe Weather Symposium and the National Tropical Weather Conference. And I had a graphic that my good friend from all the way back in childhood days, Jason, had prepared. And it is a plot. I'm going to save this for you. Number 15. Image number 15. It is the windspeed and pressure plot of Hurricane Nate. And I tell you what, it is just beautiful to see when you can see the data that we collected in graphical form like this. It's so cool. Um, you have your sustained wind in blue, your gust in red. If you take a look at the image, the pressure plot, that Vshape as the hurricane goes by, it's also very narrow because it was a fastmoving hurricane, very steep, really, really cool stuff. And I would be sharing graphics like that at the National Tropical Weather Conference and of course at Mississippi State's Severe Weather Symposium. And it looks like we're just about ready to round out January. this or or sorry, February. February it is. And it looks like we're going to go into March. And this will be a good way to end everything this episode and so forth because I'm going to tell you something. March is its own episode. It is that big of a month for so many reasons that March is going to be the second episode of season 6 here of Stories from the Hurricane Highway. But we will end with a cliffhanger for you. Uh, I guess however much a cliffhanger podcast can give you. This is February 26, 2018.
Zero Z GFS paints an ugly picture for a good chunk of the Northeast late week. Big coastal issues with this one. Full moon, I said. Higher tides, yuck. We'll monitor closely and discuss in tomorrow's offseason video post. And I will save this image for you as picture number 16 in this episode. If you get a
chance, check these out on Discord or Patreon. It shows a pretty strong nor
easter taking shape with a lot of wind and rain and snow and whatnot. Obviously later into the week coming up would be into March of 2018. And that, my friends, is where we will pick up the next episode of Stories from the Hurricane Highway. We'll cover really what was one of the most epic marches of my career. And you'll see it was really something else that month [music] of March there, the third month of 2018. All sorts of good stuff coming as we address that, talk about [music] it, tell you stories from it in the next episode. All right, that'll do it from me for this episode. As always, thank you for your support [music] of Stories from the Hurricane Highway. I am Mark Setth, the host. I'll talk to you again soon.
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