Stories from the Hurricane Highway - March Madness 2018 - Season 6 Episode 2

It's a category 2 hurricane out here. Did the western eye come ashore? >> Yes, it did. It came right across right down over top of us. Right there. >> There is the hurricane landfall project truck. It's all set up strapped down. We're going to turn all the switches on in just a little while. >> Standing outside of the Chevy Tahoe. We are getting into the eye wall of Hurricane Jean right now or came in on shore here along the southeast coast of Florida. >> These little bullet cams right here that we will use to record that surge. Good
afternoon to you. Mark 13Ttrack.com here. I'm going to downtown Miami. As
Irma goes by, it's going to be onshore flow. And there's the Herby payload right there. And that's the little probe that's going to have the temperature, pressure, and humidity. >> It's Yeah, just ugly.
>> The good thing is I've memorized the map and distances, so I know every location. >> So, I guess there is some benefit.

Hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway. I am your host Mark Sudith. Absolutely thrilled to be back with yo here as we continue on now with our second episode of the sixth season of
this podcast. And this episode is
definitely going to be a good one. Chop full of all kinds of great stories for you. Lots of pictures coming up because
March 2018 was definitely the most impactful,

action-packedfilled month of March ever
for me and my career. And I am here to
tell you all about it. And uh let's get started, shall we? Anyway, good to have you back with me for this episode. It really is going to be something special here. So, let's start off with a look back at the very end of February 2018.
because that's when I was kind of teasing some things that were coming up that were going to definitely impact March. Remember, we had a pretty busy
winter season so far in the east and in the southeast with pretty deep shots of cold and pretty stormy weather. Already had snow down to my neck of the woods in southeast North Carolina, the mid-Atlantic states. And the original
Chevy Tahoe there, the hurricane track Chevy Tahoe, it has been basically
retired at this point, serving its last mission in the first few days of January 2018. Just too expensive to repair. What was wrong with it? And we decided we would just let it sit in the driveway and maybe try a campaign to get a new
one from General Motors and Chevrolet. Kind of one and the same. had a PR firm out of South Carolina that was helping me with that at no cost. And um yeah, we

were going to just kind of figure things out from there. And then we get into the end of February here and I start talking
on Twitter about a potent winter storm

that looks like it was coming up for the
early part of March. And so this is
exactly where we will pick up. February 26, 2018. I tweeted out, "Zerz GFS paints an ugly
ugly picture." Hey, anytime you get two uglies in there, you know it's going to be bad. Uh, for a good chunk of the Northeast, late week, big coastal issues with this one. We had the full moon, higher tides. We'll monitor closely and
discuss in tomorrow's offseason video post. And I presumably did just that.

Uh, so I want to save this picture. Let me get in here real quick to the podcast
folder, the images folder, and get it prepped here real quick to dump images into. So, this is picture number one. And by the way, the latest edition of Patreon, their web interface, I think even in the
app, it displays the pictures as I
upload them uh in sequence from top to
bottom just as I'm talking about them. So picture number one would be at top and so forth. So if I have 26 pictures or whatever the case may be, that picture would be at the bottom. So yo can literally follow along with these photographs or images or graphics or whatever it is I'm posting uh as I'm talking about it. So pretty cool. I'm glad that Patreon did that. That being said, this is picture number one. What is it? It is a literal screenshot. like
I took a picture of my computer screen
and it is showing a 979 mibar low pressure area off the coast of the Delm Marva Peninsula well south there of Long Island out in the Atlantic there. Lots of isabars packed around that low meaning that there's some strong wind. a little bit of a hint of snow uh in this particular image, but it was more the pretty heavy preip at the coast and again those tightly packed isobars and
the fairly low pressure uh 979 millibars

and that would be early March and I thought, okay, this could be a significant nor easter. We could have some big-time flooding up there. We had that full moon as I mentioned and um
some of the people that follow me on the Twitter there asking you know anything for our area in North Carolina and I was like nope nothing of significance. Somebody else said I live in Rhode Island and appreciate all the information you provide. Ah I just love that interaction. It's neat uh to know that um what I post affects people
hopefully in a positive way. So, moving forward through time there, we end the month of February. Um, I talk about
basketball, all that good stuff. Uh, it's it's the middle of college basketball season, and I am, of course, a big Duke fan and we're getting close to ACC tournament time and all that stuff. Uh, anyway, so there's a smattering of uh discussion regarding
basketball here and there on my timeline. And I'll remind you again, I like to use Twitter. I think it's the easiest way for me to sort of frame up each episode because if I posted about it, it must have been important and it's all there in chronological order, still saved on the Twitter archive, which is a terrific thing. Um, so yeah, we round out the month of February and I'm just trying to see if February was one of those 28 days and sure enough it was.
Um, so the last picture that I posted in
February, clearly there's this big winter storm coming and it's going to be the first few days of March and I'm
going to go for it. I'm going to head up there. I remember I rented a I think it
was a Ford F-150. I do not have the uh

decked out Chevy Tahoe available and I didn't want to take what we'll just call our secondary Tahoe uh and just put a
lot of miles on it, especially with salt that they put on the roads or whatever chemicals they might use and that kind of thing. You know, let's let's put the miles on a rental, you know, a $70,000
rental and we'll save the uh the the other Tahoe for hurricane work or what have you. So, that's what I did. I packed up the uh Ford. Um, and there's a
great picture here. I'm really glad I I took this and I posted it. I said, and this is February 28th, taking all this gear with me to coastal Massachusetts
for the big storm Friday and Saturday. Normally, these cam boxes are used in hurricanes. This won't be much different in terms of potential impact, just colder. And this was a really big storm

that was starting to unfold in the guidance. And I thought this is going to
be a terrific test of kind of old and

new technology. We had those Logitech cameras and then we had these new Nest Cams that I had already tested out a little bit in January and into February
in uh somewhat controlled environment, you know, close to home, that kind of thing. And you know they were gradually proving themselves these new Nescams. So this picture really shows that. This is a great picture. This will be picture number two. And you can see especially
if you look at it full size what all I'm taking. We got to look at the back seat of this uh F-150 that I'm renting. And I

see one of the Nescam boxes sitting there right on the back seat. I see one of the big batteries that powers everything. these big old 50,000 milliamp um milliamp hour. It's called a Max Oak.
Again, I mentioned it in the last episode. We had these huge batter. Doesn't matter what they are called, the brand name or whatever. They're mass-produced mostly from China and the they're these lithium ion battery packs
and or battery banks, whatever you want to call them. And they do really well. Uh and so here's one of them here. Nice picture of it. silver and it's 50 amp
hours and you know so it'll power one of these neescams for three days you know and if you put a Verizon hotspot on it
and the neescam because they have USB ports four of them you could power the two of those for uh about 36 to 40 hours
something like that. Then you also see on the floorboard of this F-150

um several of the Logitech camera boxes.
And they do they look like again slightly oversized lunchboxes. But the point is I have four camera units in here that'll run an average of,
you know, 3 days, right? Or two days, whatever. 48 hours, we'll say. Between the three of these, if you average them all out, it's probably 40 to 48 hours. Great. and they're just no big deal. Like I I still have plenty of room, yo know. I got my suitcase in there somewhere presumably, a few other things. I see my boots down in the lefthand corner. Um some charging stuff
and uh it's not an SUV. I still have the
back of this vehicle, but I didn't put anything in the back. I just put it, yo know, the the bed. I put everything in the back seat so I would have room for another person and all this equipment that's going to run for an average of two days. We have come a long way uh
since 28 uh 2005 here in 2018. So
obviously 13 years later is a long time.
But this really illustrates that all this firepower so to speak of camera
technology packed into the back of this uh rental and I'm ready to go. So uh a couple of
uh I do want to look at this. A couple of responses that people made. Um, my
friend Taylor Trogden somewhere. Yo should write that name down. Taylor Trogden. T R O G D- N I think it is. Uh,

he becomes very important later in 2018.
And he said, "Keep me posted." And, uh, cuz he was really interested in seeing these. He was with the storm surge unit down at the National Hurricane Center. Hint hint. And I said, "Absolutely."
responding back to him trying out some new stuff for future hurricane seasons. Always trying to do better. And then other people are asking is this what yo use during Nate? And I said, you know, more or less yes. He was talking about the Logitech cams in this situation. So
just, you know, tremendous response. And then somebody does say Tahoe not available question mark. That was interesting. You know, I had to answer. Nope, it's not available anymore. It's done. All right. Um, and there I am. I'm
responding to people in my Twitter timeline. So, I head up there and I
arrive in Cranston, Rhode Island. Uh,
this is a funny this is a funny post. Uh, currently in Cranston, Rhode Island. I said this is March 1st. Enjoying some Boston Market for lunch. That comes as
no surprise to me and some of our

longtime friends of the project. Yo guys know I love the Boston market. Now, unfortunately, here in 2025, when I'm producing this episode, they are all but
extinct. Uh, but back then, they were uh

I won't say ubiquitous, but there was a lot of them. And I really liked it. That rotisserie chicken, some warm mashed potatoes, and gravy. You're going to get hungry hearing me describe it. And it's good sustenance. It's not quite fast food. I mean, come on. But anyway, I'm up there at the Boston Market in Cranston, Rhode Island. I like saying that. Cranston. It's 64 degrees outside,
I said, and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt. That's just crazy. Tomorrow, epic storm. Maybe a record setter, I
said. Makes it even more crazy. Got to love the weather. I must have been pumped about this. And I really was because I saw in the guidance how
powerful this storm looked to be. And I
had this technology again again a blend
of the semi old with the Logitech stuff

and the brand new Nest stuff. And I just
wanted to know the capabilities. Plus plus I was going to be going to an area up here that I had never been to before. Situit, Marshfield, and Hummer all there
on the east side. Plymouth. I've been to Plymouth before, but never down to the coast. And so this was a really exciting

um field mission. So I said uh later on
in another tweet, I'll be in coastal Massachusetts this afternoon and begin setting out the cam boxes this evening. My hotel is in Plymouth, so that'll be interesting as this develops. Kind of hope it doesn't snow. Makes things harder. We shall see. And with it being 64° in Cranston, the atmosphere had a lot of work to do to get cold enough. So, by later that afternoon, I did in fact make it to Plymouth, Massachusetts. I'll save this picture for you. Number three. Nice view from my hotel. I think I stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn, if memory serves, and
I posted this picture at 2:30 in the afternoon on March 1st, 2018.

Um, and I'm talking about how I'm going to be putting out the cameras and everything starting in Situit. And somebody responded, "Yeah, good choice on Situit." And uh for people that know,
they know Situit. By the way, I think I said that was picture number three that I saved a view from the hotel in uh the

hazy shade of winterl looking uh Plymouth, Massachusetts. But Situit, M Massachusetts is out there on the
western part of Cape Cod Bay. Um and it

kind of sticks out there. It's very vulnerable to big time uh waves coming
in. They have a seaw wall and it's kind of a curve shape to the coastline there right around Situit also in Marshfield. So you have that concave shape and it focuses that wave energy in there and you get some spectacular storms that just pound the coast. But the houses are built incredibly strong.
They know and uh they seem to do pretty
good overall. There's usually not much damage. as the roads get messed up and you get all these rocks that are those beautiful New England polished like look like river rocks and I was going to get to experience all that. I really wanted to see that. So there's my tweet. Uh I'm
up there. I'm ready to go and I'm going to go out that evening to put everything
in place to uh document this storm. Now

there were other people obviously following me on Twitter and some of those people live up there. One of them was this guy named Seth and he was

following me I believe from Boston area

and he got in touch with me maybe a private message or just you know talked
at me on Twitter as it were and I said yeah hey um send me an email and I I put my email address in there and he said uh
just jumping ahead a little bit here that he has a house a family um beach

house right on the water. So waterfront
down in Hummer in Massachusetts. So yo got Humok down there, you have Marshfield and you have Situit. And he
said, "You can put a camera at my house and I'm going to be down there later." He said, "I can give you a hand." I thought, "Well, that's awesome." Yo know, and again, that help that comes from people. these are total strangers. And that just gives me confidence and
there's just something neat about that. It makes me feel like we're kind of all in this together. It It's just a really great feeling. So, that was cool. And
I've always wanted to get up there to the Situ area and I even am mentioning that on uh Twitter and lots of people
are starting to watch this now. I'm posting videos and I I get up there to
uh Situit. Let's see what time this video was. Um 4:19 p.m. We're in March

now, so the sunset does go a little later, thank goodness. And I cannot share videos with you. Um this is an audio podcast, and I certainly want yo to look at the photographs, the images, and whatnot that I save posting on Patreon or Discord. But I am telling yo
what, I I can still still feel this the
whole like just being there for the first time. It was that grayish wintry
sky, a little bit of uh uh cream vanilla
color to it, yellowish, whatever. Yo you just know there's a big storm coming. And it was low tide and the tides up there are pretty extreme from low to high. and the tide is out and
there I am in Situit and just knowing what was coming. Everything was calm. The wind was pretty light. Temperature was in the 50s, maybe upper 40s and
there I was uh ready to go. So, what I

wanted to do was put a couple of the Nest Cams. I brought two with me for
sure. I think that's all I had at the time. Two or three, but I know I brought two of them with me. And I was going to put one of them in Situit for sure. And
then I wanted to put the other one probably down Marshfield or Hummer where
this guy Seth uh said that he lives or
has a vacation home and he would meet me there. Right. So I wait until it gets

dark because it's just easier to be
honest with you. you know, it's not trying to be nefarious or sketchy, but
you just get less people out, you know, and it's just better. And wait until dark, put the stuff up, and less look,

most people, you know, tucked in for the night, whatever. And I just have less interaction because I don't want to draw a lot of attention to these cams. I didn't have like a 12T ladder, so they're not going to be up out of reach. I mean, generally they are, but you know what I It's just there's an advantage when I can, especially by myself of trying to set these up after nightfall, just less people. And I mean, obviously I love people, uh, but when I'm trying
to work and it's just starting getting, you know, what is it? You're attracting too much attention. I don't want to do that. So, I'm going to save this picture here before the first break because it really does set the stage as to what is
coming. Again, I get up there 4ish in the afternoon and here's a great screenshot that I obviously did from my iPhone, cropped it and posted it on
Twitter. What a cool thing to do. I tell you, the technology, how far we've come in 13 years since all this stuff started with our project in earnest there in '05. Just amazing. It makes these field
missions run so much more efficiently. Anyway, this is a great image. I saved it for you. It's picture number four. It says, "Look at all the hazards, watches and warnings, etc. This is serious. Take
it as such." What do we got? We have the
hurricane force wind warning all the way
to the coast. So that includes the outer
and inner capes of Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Plymouth, hurricane force wind warning. You bet. And Situit,
Marshfield, Hummer, all hurricane force
wind warning. high wind warning for the
actual land masses. So, your coastal waters have the hurricane force wind warning, but honestly, if you look at the picture, the way the cape sticks out there, you know, Cape Cod looks like a an arm with the muscle flex, like yo know, you're trying to show your bicep and that sticks out into the Atlantic and then Cape Cod Bay is what that's technically called in there inside the curl of the arm. So, why would that not be in the hurricane force wind warning? I know I'm just nitpicking here. Uh they're probably going to get hurricane force wind gust. Okay. Then we've got the coastal flood warning, a regular flood warning, winter weather advisory, coastal flood advisory, wind advisory, winter storm watch, coastal flood watch, flood watch, and hazardous weather outlooks. A uh just complete, you know,

menu plethora of advisories, watches,
and warnings because this was going to
be quite an impactful storm. And after
this break here, I'll come back and I'll tell you all about the setting up process of the first real big time. I'm

putting it out there like, you know, sort of like shouting from the rooftops. Hey, we're testing these new cams. Everybody look like this is the real deal. The New Jersey and the North Carolina winter storms, those are some good tests. This was going to do the trick to show me, prove to me that these
new Nest Cams were going to be the real deal.

All

right, back with you now. Stories from the hurricane highway continuing. We are now up, of course, to March 1st, 2018.
I am in the Northeast. I'm up in Massachusetts. Checked into my hotel in Plymouth. Got the old Hilton Garden in there. And I'm ready to go. I'm ready to get these cameras out. I've got the two Nest Cams. I brought a couple of these Logitech cameras, these Logitech broadcasters, and I've got a plan. I know I'm going to set some stuff up in Situit. already been there, scoped a few things out. But I do have a friend that
is going, you know, again, somebody I've met on the internet, uh, this guy Seth, who is going to meet me down at his family's beach house, a little cottage
deal down in Hummer, at Hummer Beach,
and that is where I'm going to set out the very first truly operational Nest
Cam. Like, this is going to be on the Weather Channel. Again, it's going to be out there for the world to see. Uh, pass
or fail. And I was very excited about this. Now, I did not bring a ladder with
me, and I'm just realizing that as I've gone through my show prep here, looking back through all my Twitter stuff. I didn't bring a ladder, but I did have this Ford F-150. And my first stop here down at Hummer, I wanted to go there first and then I'd go up to Situit. I don't remember why I did that, but that's the way I did it. Humok first. Uh, I went down there and I
thought this is pretty clever. Seeing that I didn't bring a ladder, I found the utility pole, this big wooden utility pole that I was going to use to put the camera on. And again, this thing
is um kind of like the size of a like a

an older laptop, maybe a little bit larger, uh, but about the thickness of

uh, I don't know, about 6 in thick. This first camera case is called, and you can look it up if you're so compelled. Uh, it is the Pelican Storm case. So, Pelican's the company. Storm Case is sort of the the brand name or whatever. And, uh, it is the IM 2100.
And, you know, it's uh, not tiny, but it
certainly isn't big. And I knew I wanted to put it out somewhere where it had a good view. Obviously, the Nest Cam does have night vision, but I wasn't real sure yet how well that worked. But I really wanted a good shot sort of down a
street. You don't want to I've learned as I've done this over the years, yo don't necessarily need the camera to look at the water, unless the water is going to rise many, many feet and cover
the camera or something like that, which we would learn to do much later on. But, you know, in this situation, I'm just learning these things. So, I wanted it to look down the the street if it could so we get some perspective. And uh this guy Seth indeed met me at his house, his
beach house. And I got to work. And so what I did to uh deal with the fact that I didn't bring a ladder, I simply backed the F-150 all the way up with the tailgate down to
within an inch or so of this big wooden
utility pole. and I stood on top of that
um tailgate and got to work. The tailgate's uh I don't know about 3 ft above the ground and I'm about 5'8. So,
you know, I got the camera up fairly high. Keeps it out of reach of anybody walking around. They would need a ladder or back their truck up if they wanted to mess with it. And the camera was ready
to go. And the beautiful thing about this, first, let me tell you what time this was. Um, I uh got down there was,
you know, kind of late in the evening, I guess you could say, 8:30. So, it certainly is an early evening. Got the camera up and running at 8:30 there on March the 1st. And I took a couple pictures, and I'm going to save those for you here, of course. Uh, let's see which pictures these are going to be. Numbers five and six. So, picture number
five shows the Nescam, and this is a
great example of exactly how I did this.

Um, and again, this is before I learned how to do ratchet straps. Once we meet Brent later on down the road in the Florence episode, everything changes. He really helps out with ratchet straps. But before I met Brent, I was still using this bracket. It's like an L bracket and a fairly big one. I think it's a 6-in L bracket. And then I take Gorilla tape. You can clearly see this in the picture if you're able to reference it. And so I put the bracket up first. The bracket holds the weight of the camera, so it acts like an extra hand. And then I use bungee cords to
secure the camera a little bit. And then I put these big industrial-grade zip ties on that Carrie found for us. And there was three of them on this particular camera unit. It's going to be windy, but we're not talking about 100 miles an hour of wind, so I wasn't too worried about that. But the camera's up. It's secured. I locked it. You can clearly see there's like a uh plasticcoated chain with a nice fat lock
on it. I posted this picture for you, of course, on Patreon and they're on Discord as well. And uh there it is. The camera was up and running. And the other picture number six, I think it is. And this is cool, folks. It's the actual picture, like a screenshot from the Nest Cam itself. And you can see me down in
the right hand corner. Uh you look carefully, there I am. And I'm probably looking down at my phone trying to get that screenshot. You can see the back of the pickup truck and you can see down this little beach road here out at Hummer Rock Hummer Beach. And these little beach cottages, these are not I mean maybe they are now, but they're not like million-doll um 3 4,000 ft modern homes. You know,
these have been there a while and they're just little beach houses. But nevertheless, um popular area of Massachusetts, especially in the summer. And this big noraster, this big coastal storm is going to probably send some
overwash in there, maybe have some power outages, all that stuff. And I'm ready. Camera number one, the first Nest Cam operationally is up. And in fact, the tweet is first cam is up in Hummer. We'll post the link to it tomorrow as things get going. Also, we'll have all of the cameras on the Weather Channel from time to time. Having dinner now, then on to set out the next cam and situate. Funny I said I'm having dinner. I have no idea if you can believe that. This is one of those moments where I don't remember. I don't remember where I had dinner, but doesn't matter. So, there's that. Um, so then I go on up and
I'm going to make my way to Situit at this point and set up the camera there.
And for whatever reason, I didn't post
anything uh from when I said I'm having dinner, etc., and then I'm going to go to Situit. I didn't post anything on Twitter. I don't know why, but I didn't. there's no record of it. Um, so now we're up to March 2nd and my first tweet, uh, I said, "Yeah, getting windy, uh, here in coastal Massachusetts. Almost dead calm this afternoon." Um, I guess, let me see what time this was. I see what it is. So, this is 12:40 in the morning. Now, it's making sense. So, clearly, it took me a little while
to get up there. Obviously, I had dinner somewhere. Then I drove up to Situit, got everything set up, and then the storm started to crank because I said here was almost dead calm this afternoon. Now we're past, you know, 40 minutes past midnight. So it's now March the second. And I said now gusting easily 25 to 30 in exposed areas at the
immediate coast, which is where I was. So I got some sleep, get up the next morning, and right off the bat, things
are looking pretty interesting. This is about 11:15 in the morning and I posted
our two nest cams set up in Hummer Rock and Situit are running just fine. And man, these screenshots just incredible. This is Situit a few minutes ago. This will be picture number seven. And uh
yeah, check that out if you get a chance. Really, really something else to see. Um, it's not like a highresolution

4K picture or whatever, but pretty darn
good showing the scene there in Situit.
Uh, all this water just spilling in underneath the houses, between the houses and Situit, of course, very
exposed to the Atlantic/Cape Cod Bay.
And huge waves slam up against that seaw
wall there, spray over the top. There's all kinds of rocks and whatever. We'll talk about that more as we go through because you're going to, you know, see those rocks and know we certainly saw them on the feed, but stuff's running great and the storm is just really getting cranking, right? Uh, high tide coming in pretty much around this time
and I'm very excited about all of this. Things are really running the way they are supposed to. Just a few minor hiccups. Um, but really a a great first

outing. uh on a pretty big stage here. Again, putting it out there for the Weather Channel to ingest, bring in, and then show on air when they could, tweeting stuff out, like really putting everything out there. So, I got a friend, uh, as I said, Seth down there at Hummer who sent some, uh, video from
his house. He stayed. This is not a hurricane. You're not expecting, uh, a tremendous surge or anything. Yeah. Can you may he might get stuck. Sure. if there's enough overwash, whatever. But uh he stayed down at the beach house and he sent me some video in uh to me via text. And of course, I downloaded it on the phone and threw it on the Twitter there. Really easy to do in 2018. And
he's down there at the coast. Wind is blowing pretty good. The waves are nice and big. It's very frothy out there. He's got his little dog with him. Uh quite the scene there. And very rocky uh at the beach there. Um, but you know, so far not too bad overall. Moving on along
a little bit after noon and still
stuff's really cranking. You can see these waves coming in. Uh, save this picture for you. Where are we up to now? And let's see, what are we at? Uh, this is picture eight. Picture number eight here. Um, just quite a scene. Wave after

wave that overwash spills in, hits the
seaw wall, comes over, roars down into
the town, fills up the the little harbor there at Situit, and the water levels are rising. You know, it was just it was just relentless this onslaught of this big nor easter, and it is basically cold
rain. I want to make that very clear. We didn't have any snow yet. We're looking at just cold rain and very, very windy out there. 55 60 miles per hour, maybe more. Um, so yeah, I saved that picture for you a little bit afternoon and uh different people interacting with me on social media and I'm, you know, responding back. I said it's not good. Major flooding already. So, we're in the major flood stage with three more high high tide cycles to go. At least the rest of the year. Things are lovely up here, I'm sure. I said, yep. Um, so a

little bit later on, uh, like by a minute or so, 12:07, I want to get out from where I am in Plymouth, and go put out my other two cameras, these Logitech cameras. And man, I am socked in. I'm going to save this picture for you. This is picture number nine. And it's a radar scope shot. And what we see, uh, I am a
circle. That's my geoloccation of where I am. I'm right there in Plymouth. And
uh we're socked in. I mean, it is windy,
rainy, cold, little bit of wet snow trying to mix in, blasting out there with just very, very cold rain off that Cape Cod Bay and or the Atlantic. Um,

and I want to get out there and set up more cameras. Of course, I do. I really work hard during these storms. I don't give up. And I want to go down because again I keep getting emails from people offering for me to set up something at
their property, near their property. They might know somebody, what have you.
And another of one of those situations uh presented itself. I got an email from someone that says, "I'm down in Town
Neck Beach, which is near Sandwich." Yes, it's really called Sandwich out on the Cape Cape Cod. And I'm going to go down there and I'm going to set up a camera and scope the place out. Well, scope first, then set up the camera. But it's daytime now. We're up to again March 2nd. And uh a little bit afternoon now. We're getting towards probably 12:30, 1:00. I head out. A lot of traffic. I'm tweeting about that. Lots of people leaving the Cape. I said, I get down to uh Town Neck Beach to set up the camera. Uh again, this is going to be the Logitech cam. And um there was a
lot of people down there, a lot of liloos as they say because Cape Cod Bay
and this is the north side of the inner
part of the Cape really. And uh it's,
you know, Cape Cod Bay is wild. Big waves, spray coming off, very windy out there, 45 to 60 miles hour just
depending on whether or not uh a band of

uh the storm comes through. It's similar to a hurricane, you know, it's counterclockwise rotation, what have you, but it's rocking and rolling out there. Very raw, very nasty, getting a little bit colder. Um, flooding going on, coastal flooding. Um, I mean, just a
classic big time nor easter. So, I make

my way down to that area. I scope the spot out in this uh town neck beach, and

I go by, and I had to save this picture for you guys. Uh, I go by this Wendy's
that's um in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
And you like, you know, why you saving a
picture of Wendy's? It's picture number 10. Because folks, come on. That's a New England Wendy's. It's just so doesn't look like a Wendy's. It looks like a nice place, you know? Not the Wendy's isn't nice. I'm just saying I couldn't believe it. I remember I went in there and it was it was like, wow, this is like, you know, Wendy Wendy's extra. and
the picture of it. I even said that I said probably the coolest Wendy's I've ever been to in Plymouth, Massachusetts, no less. So, I went down, scoped out the
place, I guess, and went back up to Plymouth. Uh, let's see what time I posted this. Time is always of the essence. This is 4:00. Because what I wanted to make sure happened was that I
would get this camera set up down at Town Neck Beach so that it would run
that night and then through the next day into the next night and maybe even the next morning some 30 hours or so. This is that Logitech cam. So I go back to Plymouth, had my really nice Wendy's.
went back to the hotel, dried out, warmed up a little bit, and then I went
back down and I set up the camera in Town Neck Beach and posted that Ustream
link cuz remember, and I know there's a lot to keep up with here, we have the
Nest Cams that are running on Google's
infrastructure, their content delivery network or CDN. And then you have Ustream, which is where the Logitech camera, literally called the Ustream Broadcaster. These cameras were hardcoded to stream directly to Ustream.
Those go to Ustream. So I've got two
cameras running on Nest Hummer Situit.
Doing great. And then we have our first Logitech cam streaming to Ustream. And
that is down at this town neck beach kind of in the sandwich area. Uh, and I was hoping if everything goes well, I said this on the Twitter there, that, uh, it should be stunning to see tomorrow afternoon because these big coastal flood warnings were up and these next few high tide cycles, the water level just gets higher and higher, the waves more relentless and we were looking at the potential for some serious uh, coastal flooding. So, uh, I

do my work, I get back to the hotel, power out. I explained that, you know, posted that up on on Twitter here. Wind is really cranking power in and out. Going to be a long 36 hours. And indeed
it was. In fact, some of these high tide forecasts coming up uh for the next day

or two. Um this one was from Eric Fischer. This post I'll save this image because it's the tide gauge. What are we up to now? Picture number 11. Image. I'm
This is an image anyway. A graphic number 11 for you. Eric Fischer, who of course is the staple, big-time meteorologist up there, very popular um in the Boston area up at WBZ. Great
communicator. And he posted this, the updated tide forecast for Gloucester looks ugly tonight, significantly higher than what we saw at midday. Now, I was ready for that. Like I knew
the camera at uh Situit and the one at Hummer Rock would probably run for 48 to
60 hours, something like that. And we should be able to run through these high tides. But this high tide is going to be
at night, late at night. And like yo can't see, the power is probably going to be out. It's obviously very cloudy. And sure enough, we get up to 5:21 p.m.
That's literally the time stamp on my next picture that I'm going to save for you here. Picture number 12. And um it

just it looks like the power's out. Yo don't see any street lights. There's somebody's headlights down there. But if you get a chance to look at this picture, I've saved it for you again. Picture number 12. Um look at the And

obviously we've gone into low tide now, so we're not getting much overwash at all. But if you can look at this picture, it's it's, you know, near dusk and you look at it and you say, "Okay, that's Situit, Massachusetts." All right. Uh what? They don't pave their roads there because it looks like dirt and gravel and rock. Well, of course they pave their roads. Um that is all
from the overwash. Layer upon layer.
Each one of those waves that comes in and they are relentless. Adds a new
layer of sediment. And in this case, yo know, the erosion and deposition, it's depositing all of this coarse material.

And you know, down south, the sand is a lot finer. And once you get to the Gulf, it's even more fine. It's almost like powdered sugar. People say the white sugar beaches of Pensacola or wherever.
Um, not up here, not in the Northeast in New England. It's a much more coarse, rocky, uh, in some cases kind of large
rocks, lots of pebbles, and the road, everything was just getting covered up in these layers of deposited sand and

rocks and stuff. Uh, but it looked like the power was out that I said and it was flickering on and off and certainly was at my hotel. Um, so that is picture 12
that I've saved. All right, moving on along. Picture number 13. And this is important here. This is the shot from the Logitech. The previous picture number 12 is from Nest. And again, we're
getting towards dark here, but the next one here is from Logitech. And it's at the Town Neck Beach location. Uh I don't
remember who it was that I worked with there, but again, I get these emails or I get messages on Twitter or whatever people that offer to help out. And yo know, more times than not, I'm able to take advantage of that. And we we make some really good progress because of that. We really do. And in this case,
again, I didn't want the camera looking right out at the water cuz all you see is water. And since I knew it was going to be at night, I asked the people, if you look at the photo, picture number 13, their house, the people that contacted me is on the right. And there's a little alleyway or whatever you want to call it between the two houses, a little passageway. We're looking north towards Cape Cod Bay. Small cottage on the left. The people that offered up help and whatever their cottage is on the right, they got the light on. And as long as the power would stay on, we would be able to see something, right? That was the idea. So that's why the camera was back on the the road that
passes behind these houses, more like an alley. And we're looking north towards Cape Cod Bay. So now uh we've got these
three cams just keeping up with everything for you. Hummer, Situit, and
Town Neck Beach near Sandwich. It's getting dark and everything's running exactly as it should be. All right, so
power back on temporarily anyway at Situit. Uh next picture I'm going to save for you here, number 14.
And uh this is again Situit at 5:47 p.m.

The good thing since we're up to March 2nd is the sun goes down a little later
even up north. You know, obviously the sun and and and we're farther to the east too, way out on the Cape there. Um
so anyway, I actually it would get darker earlier because they're farther east, but whatever. Sunset is a little bit later, so that helps a little bit. A few more minutes of daylight. Uh, but it's 5:47 and this is just a better shot, a clearer image of this sandy,

grally looking area. The roadway, all
that parking lots, they're all full of this, you know, sand and rock stuff. And
now we're getting ready to head into the night and uh see what happens. So, I go
back to my hotel uh there, the Hilton Garden Inn or whatever it was, I guess, in Plymouth. And uh now people are
starting to come in to the hotel as
evacuees. I'm not kidding. A lot of people in the lobby trying to check in. Why? Winds are now 55 65 milesPH.

And we're getting trees falling. They're falling on homes. They're falling on cars. Power is out. And people are trying to get somewhere safe. And the hotel Plymouth maybe the hotel. Well, I know the hotel didn't have a generator cuz I lost power. Nevertheless though, people are coming to the hotel. The lobby was filled with uh there's no other term for it, evacuees really. And I'm back there uh trying to get some work done, monitoring everything. The snow starts to come in cuz temperatures are gradually getting colder. And uh let's see what time I posted that cuz I literally said that this is 8:13 that night. So the snow starts cranking
uh just a bit. kind of a wet snow, very,
very windy, 50, 60 miles per hour down at the ground level. And uh this genius
right here, I wanted to go out because
of course I'm driven to do this. I wanted to put my fourth camera out on
Water Street, aptly named in Plymouth,
right down there, so we could see the next high tide. But I wanted the power to stay on. Sometimes it doesn't care what I want, right? Um and we'll see what happens. So, I went out in all that cold, blustery condition, very, very
strong wind just blasting my face with that slushy snow. And uh I got the
camera up. So, I will save that image
number 15. And there we go. And it doesn't show much. I realize that if you're able to look at it, but it was the point that I had put in this effort um to set this stuff up. Four cameras running, see what we can see, testing things. always testing. It's always worth that effort. I say that often. And we're good. I got everything up and running that I possibly can. And now we just have to wait and see. And uh it starts to snow
just a little bit more, but not really cold enough for it to start sticking though. It's just one of those borderline situations. And even late at night, this is a hard picture to see what I'm talking about. I'm going to realize that or I do realize that as I'm saving it for you. Uh, this being picture 16.
Um, this was at 10:45
and if you look at it just right, especially in a dark room, I can see
even though the power is out at Situate, that's pretty much what I tweeted that you can see the ocean spilling in and it's that white frothy. I mean, I was
watching this camera and of course, I'm very tuned into what they're what they look like, what I'm looking for. And I could see with just enough ambient light

when the waves would come in under these
houses and it was really, really coming in strong. You could hear the wind on the cam. So, save this picture for yo as well. And it was a big night. Yo

know, this was it. Like, all right, yo know, the tide's coming in. Cameras are
on. Let's see what happens. Overall, though, as we get into the next day, let's see what time this was. We're up to March the 3, my wife's birthday, by
the way, and I wasn't home for it. I'm working, but it's 12:13 a.m. and we're
now up to March 3rd, and I'm up. I'm monitoring all this from my hotel. Um,

luckily the news that I was hearing from people that were out there and some news reports that this high tide was not quite as bad as the one earlier. And hopefully the worst is over. And yo know, tide stuff is it's all relative.
The storm can shift a little bit. even 20 miles makes a big difference in the fetch cuz I know I cited earlier the the post there from Eric Fischer that the nighttime high tide would be significantly higher and luckily
um it was not. So that was good. Um so

let's see what else. Um high tide coming out. Let's see what time this was. 10:34. So I posted something. This is interesting. Getting my time bearings here. So, I posted the thing about the
news overall I'm hearing is the high tide was not as bad. That was at 12:13.
Then I obviously got some sleep and we
get uh all the way up to the next high tide. Now, obviously it's daytime on March the 3. Uh again, my wife's birthday. Happy birthday to Rebecca way back there in 2018. Um, and we can see, yay, we can see our
our camera shots from Hummer and from Situit. And, um, this tide looked pretty

bad. Um, I put different clips on, uh,

Twitter. Um, I went down to Sandwich
myself. This was, uh, let's see what time I posted this. 1:38 that afternoon.

Um, and things were looking pretty rough overall. Uh, and then there's a place called um Minot Beach Insitu. This guy named Chris
whose screen handle or Twitter handle is Norista. Norista T ah143.

March 3rd, 2018. He sent me or tagged me
some video. I wish I could share this with you. It's so neat to see. Big wave slamming in there. This was north of Situit. Um, really, really impressive
stuff still going on. our camera is doing quite well and the tide starts to
go back down and I'm able to finally get
out there that afternoon and um start

picking stuff up. And it's funny because
this picture, this is uh what picture are we up to now? Let's see here. Uh 17.

So, we'll save that for you. Picture number 17. Uh a couple things to point out on this picture. It's just a cropped photo of me

approaching my camera down there um in

in this case it's uh Plymouth. I got out and about in Plymouth. I can't get to Situate yet cuz it's closed off. They I won't say evacuated it, but that's no man's land. You can't get down there. But I did want to go grab my camera not far from my hotel in Plymouth. And
there's a couple things to point out with this that are pretty obvious. A, I'm a big Duke fan because I'm wearing the Duke sweatshirt. The camera saw me approaching. And B, I'm a Portley fella
in this photograph. No doubt about it. Fat Mark there. And that's important because of something that's going to happen later on in 2018. We'll circle back. But not my best look, that's for sure. But I got the the Duke sweaty on there, the sweatshirt, the hoodie. Uh, supporting my Blue Devils. So there it is. It says the tweet uh when your own cam sees you coming for it again. I
cannot get out to Situit cuz they've
rolled it up. So, I go down instead to
Hummer Rock Beach and boy oh boy, like

the way the sand and uh the pebbles, the pebbles, the rocks, whatever. Billions of pebbles rolled in there, it created

not a washboard, but like humps of
sediment, just gunk. And big pickup
trucks were coming through and just banging around. I I filmed one of them and threw it on the Twitter there. Uh, but I did I went back down to Hummer Beach first, grabbed the camera from down there and was and let's see what
time this was cuz I got the camera. This is 4:00. Um, I met up with Seth. He had brought his wife and I think they had two kids.
They came down at this point. I think they live in Boston. Um I I remember
they had like a Tesla and like a big Suburban and things were calming down and they could get out there no problem. Kind of rocky for sure and you know water on the road or whatever but they made it down there but Situit not so good. Um and I had to wait. I had to kind of stall. So I hung out with uh
Seth and his family for a little bit. I remember I collected probably a dozen of

these just amazingly beautiful, perfectly polished um they look like
river rocks, but you know, they are the quintessential type of rocks that are just up there in the northeast that look like they've been uh through a rock tumbler. Very, very smooth and beautiful, different granite, all sorts of kinds of rock, right? I'm not too much of a geologist, but boy, they were just gorgeous. Different sizes, yo know, and I remember I collected at least a dozen, put them in the rental truck. I wanted to bring them home, show my kids. Um, and I write the dates on them. I've done this since then. I take a Sharpie and I write on there, yo know, nor Easter March 2018 on the back of the rock, the back or the front, whatever. You flip it over and that's the front or the back. But I do and I save them and I've got them in my office. Just so you know. Uh it's just part of, you know, keeping track of everything I've done. So, uh anybody ever finds rocks that I leave behind and they have dates on them, that's what that's all about. All right. So, uh I'm
waiting and waiting and um I am wanting

to get back out to Situit. Finally, I can get out there close enough to where
I can walk out at least to get to Oceanside Drive and grab the camera. It
is rocky and like covered in this
sediment stuff like crazy. Pretty decent
coastal flooding around. Situate Harbor is not in terrible shape, but you know, not the best either. And yeah, it is it
is just like, wow, they really got walloped. And so I I got my myself out
there, got the camera down and filmed

some of the water just kind of flowing through and was pretty much done with

the mission. Uh, and this is just March
3rd, by the way. I told you March is its own episode. We're only up to March 3rd.

Uh, big big month. So, here's a couple of really, really cool pictures from
that overall storm event. So, I went on the Google Street View and found where I had the camera positioned. Basically,
this is picture number, and I really hope you can can reference these because this is a great example. Picture 18 is
the Google Earth shot whenever it was taken uh whenever, right? and a long
time ago I guess uh on a nice day kind
of cloudy but whatever you get the idea it's um quaint typical New England
coastal community kind of a narrow street there but it's clear then the next picture is a photograph that I took
of that same street uh and this will be
picture 19 uh that I posted that day I took the picture I posted it that day as I'm finally on my way out and It wasn't, yo
know, like they didn't have a lot of damage. So, it's not, and I even said that, nothing overly dramatic, but still power outage, the whole works. It was a good hit for them. A big coastal flood. And these two pictures, pictures 18 and 19, kind of show that. But here's the thing that I want to sort of summarize for you as we wrap up this segment. Anyway, and again, we're only up to March 3rd. So, the cameras worked
really, really well. Uh, the Logitech
cameras have already been proven for a few years and they did great, but these
new Nest Cams really started to sort of

earn their place with me as being all
right, this could be the new generation here. Their quality was really good. They stream no matter what. If they disconnect, they reconnect. Um, I've got the ability to create these clips very quickly and share them. I can do the screenshots really easy. And the real big thing though is the connectivity. I remember watching and I
I think it was on something live on my
phone or I was at a restaurant or I saw

the Weather Channel playing somewhere. Might have been in a restaurant somewhere off the coast, maybe Plymouth
or somewhere. I don't know. Maybe I stopped somewhere for lunch. But I saw the Weather Channel on something. Might have been my hotel. I don't know. And they had Jim Canour out there and he was in situit and they were using this live
view platform which uses basically
cellular modem technology to bond
several different SIM cards AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile kind of throws them all together and you bond that into one signal and you're supposed to get a much better pipeline to the internet. And that's how they did it. He was reporting down there, not far at all from where I had my camera, right in the thick of it. Of course he was. He's got the goggles on, the helmet, very well prepared for it. It's Jim Canour. What do you expect? And I remember watching this wherever it was. I might have been in somebody. Maybe I was at um Seth's house and saw it. Anyway, I remember seeing how the

signal was struggling. It would kind of pixelate. It would freeze a little bit and it was clearly bandwidth issues, but it wasn't rain fade like you get when there is a satellite transmission. This was clearly something going on basically video over internet, right? Whereas my
camera, not too far away from gym at all, less than a mile, was streaming pretty steadily. It wasn't 4K or something like that. But my point is my camera was
having a pretty good feed, no problem.

And this big multiund million dollar
company, the Weather Channel, I was at least doing as well with my feed as they were. And they were using live view. So,
it gave me confidence, you know, that wow, these Nescams really could be the

future of all kinds of work uh that

we're going to do from winter storms, right? And certainly for hurricanes. So,

on my way back, I'm trying to head home, go through Cranston, probably had Boston Market again, and I got to get back home. We're only in the first few days of March. Um I I'm somewhere near
Boston, I think on the outskirts, I guess. And I remember I passed the sign for the Duncan Brands world headquarter uh world headquarters cuz I tweeted that I said, "Man, passing the sign for Duncan Brands, that's that's huge." And then finally, I'll uh I will sign off on
this segment anyway. We'll go to another break here real quick. Um, on my way
back, I pulled off uh on March 3rd. Again, a lot happened even on just that day, my wife's birthday. Uh, I remember I pulled off at
some rest stop deal on probably one of
the turnpikes up there or some throughway or something and I watched on my iPad the Duke Carolina game, a big

rivalry of course, and uh Duke won. So,

I'm going to save this. This is what it's a rare moment that I can save a sports picture for you. Uh, but yeah, I screen captured it and I tweeted about it and I said, um, and I was tweeting

out to a couple different people here that went to North Carolina based colleges. Uh, one of them, of course, is Eric Webb and then the other one is,

uh, Sam, his name is Sam Roback. And I
think they went to NC State and I tweeted at them. I said, "Man, you're welcome. Um, GTHC, which is everybody
that's a Duke Carolina fan knows is Go to Hell Carolina." And that's fine cuz they have Go to Hell Duke. So there yo go. It's this big-time rivalry that goes back over a hundred years. And that was my last post as this mission, a very
successful mission, testing out these new cameras, kind of getting like, okay, I think we're going to be pretty soon mothballing these Logitech cams. We now
have a very viable candidate with these new Nest Cams for something that could be absolutely incredible as we head towards now less than 90 days before the
2018 hurricane season.

Heat. Heat.

All right, back with you now. Stories from the hurricane highway continuing. We are up to the first few days of March
2018 and I've been a busy man. Already
been up to New England for a big winter storm up there. Tested these Nest Cams
and honestly they exceeded my expectations. just terrific in their performance, their quality, their tenacity, their ability to stay on the
air, stay streaming no matter what, even
in a very low um bandwidth situation.

And this wintertorm was a terrific test. Very glad to have met this guy, Seth, and his family there in Hummer. And just
being in that part of New England, I had never done it before. or I had been out on Cape Cod back in 2014 for a big
winter storm. The very first big-time storm like that that I ever went after. So, this was different. Plymouth and Marshfield, Hummerok, Situit, that was a
really really um successful opening to

uh the 2018 winter season. Uh you know, in earnest, right? Like a big newsmaking storm. That
was it. and it was a very very good test and a good use of resources and everything. So I come back and uh again
it's only the first few days of March here and I got to get ready. I got all kinds of things coming up. We have Weatherfest 2018. I posted about that on March the 5th. That's going to be happening on March 10th over in Columbia, South Carolina. And I tweeted
about that. I'll save that image for you. It's just kind of neat. It says the National Weather Service and adventure
children's museum. So adventure is like a play on words with adventure. Like
we're going on an adventure or education. So it combined them. So it's called the Adventure Children's Museum. See what they did there? Pretty clever. I was going to be doing that on the 10th and uh some of my family was going to go with me for that. So I'll save this picture for you. It's kind of neat to see some of this old stuff that I did
many years ago. That's picture number 21 for you. Um, in addition, uh, getting
ready, you know, kind of looking ahead to hurricane season 2018. And to that
end, Michael Lowry, our good friend Michael Lowry posting about the Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures. Definitely want to save this picture for you. Picture number 22, I believe we're up to. Yes, it is. And what was he saying? Well, again, we're less than 100 days away from hurricane season. Inside 90 days, honestly, at this point, right, early March, so we're less than 90 days away. So, Lowry posted, quote, "Last
week, the Gulf of Mexico recorded its warmest weekly anomaly on record at 1.5

Celsius above the long-term average.
That's some serious warmth. And while it
wouldn't have any bearing on the first part of the hurricane season, the Gulf usually does not, unless you get June or July development, boy, once you got into the latter part, especially October, that would really become a problem. So, this was kind of one of those preient, is that the word? Uh, tweets, you know, it's this warm. Wait until you see what happens in October. We all know how that turned out. At least we should by now. We'll get there with a future episode here. And I'm getting ready for conference season. So again, March, very, very busy traveling and then
getting ready for these conferences. I'm getting tracking the hurricanes 2017.
It's going to be in two parts because it's such a big documentary. Got to get that finished and out there. Um just my
plate was full. That's all there is to it. Uh so talking about getting ready for conference time in April, we had the National Tropical Weather Conference. That was the 3rd through the 7th. I would of course be attending and speaking about our adventures in 2017.
And I was working on my PowerPoint for that. And I had done sort of like the home slide, the poster slide, whatever you want to call it, the introduction slide. And this is pretty nice. I'm going to save this for you, too, cuz I thought I did a good job with this to be honest with you. Uh, picture number 23.

well before the age of generative AI.
This is all yours truly in Photoshop. And I think it's a pretty cool picture. It says technology at work, the 2017 hurricane season. That's the title. Um National Tropical Weather Conference. That's on there as well with a nice background image of Irma. Sort of this
blue transparent ghostly image. And then
five pictures shaped like a little bit of a triangle almost. And I don't know, just something is very aesthetic about it. But I thought I did a good job. Good graphic design and attention getting if
I may toot my own horn. So there you go. Toot toot. So I saved that for you. What picture was that by the way? Just so yo know. That's number 23. Um and by the

way, also speaking of PowerPoint, it wouldn't be long after that I wouldn't do PowerPoint anymore. Um I switched over because PowerPoint let me down too many times in the past with the way pictures are embedded. Sometimes they don't have the right resolution on the display screen or the laptop and whatever its display resolution is. Um,
and videos might not play if they're not embedded or actually they are embedded in the PowerPoint, but they also have to be on the laptop that's presenting them. And I've just run into too many problems. And I thought I don't know if I started it in 2019 or later. or we didn't do anything in 2020 for obvious reasons, but at some point I switched over and it might have been 19 or 21
where I just did a video. So if my presentation was 20 minutes, I would
just do a 18minute video and basically

uh narrate it and kind of accompany
everything and and time it right. Yo know what I mean? So it's just all 18 minutes long. Exactly. And then I can do really cool things with transitions and videos and, you know, pictures that fade in and out. That's just much more fancy than PowerPoint. And I don't have to say
next slide or have a clicker and the clickers don't work sometimes. You know what I mean? So, I just thought I'd bring that up that 2018 might have been one of the last times I ever did PowerPoint, but what a good PowerPoint it was going to be. So, I was getting ready for all that, keeping an eye on the winter weather that was just relentless. Lots and lots of winter storms in the east and in the northeast. Um, we get up to March 9th and finally I
dropped the tracking the hurricanes 2017

part one, the uh the first of two parts

because it was such an epic big
production. Part one would cover everything up to Harvey, including the Great American Eclipse of 2017. And then
part two, which would come a few months later or weeks later, whatever it was, would cover from Irma through Nate and,
you know, the wrap-up or whatever. And if you haven't seen these, uh, I will put a link when I post this podcast episode. I'll link to these documentaries on Patreon and on the
Discord so that you can see them if yo haven't. They're pretty good, you know. Um, you know, I've talked about this before. I love the film making and the documentary aspect of what I do. It's a great way to leave a legacy out there and people watch them. Uh, and we'll talk more about that later, how people watch them and, you know, how they've led to me meeting other people that work with us even today. But anyway, March 9th, 2018, that is when I finally put Tracking the Hurricanes 2017 part one out there. And the response was immediate. People really liked it. They appreciated it, especially those that lived through some of these events throughout either the Gulf Coast or the Caribbean, whatever the case may be. Um,
really good instant feedback. So, we're up to March 10th and I'm all set up in Columbia, South Carolina at this point. It's a Saturday. I got the family with me. Like I said, a few of the kids and my wife came and we're ready for Weatherfest 2018. And we're at the Edventure. Uh I love that name. That's very clever. Um Children's Museum and a

couple pictures for you here. What are we up to? I always lose track of that. We're 24 and 25 will be the two pictures from Weatherfest. um right when we got set up and we had the local TV station there out of Columbia WIS anybody listening from that area you know the station um Colombia a
big city there in central South Carolina and it was a really fun event got to meet people and talk to them about their experiences their histories their
interest in weather some preparedness stuff showing videos you know taking questions from people and as this next
picture I'll save for area shows keeping an eye on those long range models and even in some cases not so long range because there just kept on being this parade of winter storms these big norers
and this is a literal photograph that I took. This is picture 26 of the laptop

and I mean it might be the laptop that I'm recording this podcast on honestly.
Um, but yeah, it's a 969 mibar low
sitting, I don't know, a good 100 miles east of Cape Cod. Um, south and east of
the Gulf of Maine, another big powerful nor easter. And I was kind of teasing with the tweet that I might be going back up there again that week, you know, the the week ahead. Um, and you know, I was joking around that it was time to buy a winter home up there, Cape Cod in vicinity. Now, I couldn't do that. I not
buy the home part. Of course, I can't do that. I don't have an extra 800,000 laying around. Um, but I couldn't go up there. And I said that almost immediately following this tweet. I said, man, I love Cape Cod, but but fine by me not to drive two days there and back again. And it wasn't so much lazy,
oh, I don't want to go work. I mean, I I love this stuff. It's it's incredible to be able to document the weather in such a different way using all the technology we've got. Of course, it is. But I'm only one guy and I had a lot to do. I had to get ready for these conferences and symposiums and all sorts of stuff. Family time that matters of course. Nevertheless, it was literally one storm after another big time um winter weather

for the east and the northeast especially. And then different people would post their experiences with it. There's a good friend of our project who since 2018 I finally met this guy. His name is Jeff with a G. Jeff Calderon, I
met him, I can't remember what year, maybe 2022. Um, we'll have to get him on the podcast and when it comes to that time, that would be cool. But, uh, Jeff lives up there near Boston, we'll say, and he's a big snow and winter weather nut. Knows a lot of people, too. Was a huge help in subsequent years in lining
me up with people that I could work with, especially in Situit and Marshfield. Uh but he posted on the Twitter there March 13th a a video 16 in
of snow probably he said going to add another 3 in in the next hour or so and
yeah uh I could live at least vicariously through Jeff. So we get
through mid-March and beyond and yes it
is just one winter storm after another. We're now up to March 21st. At least we're approaching the last third of March. And uh my good friend Mike up
there. I know a lot of Mike's uh in Brigantine, uh Atlantic City area, the
same gentleman that helped me out during uh Irma. Um he is Storm Force One with a
little underscore Stormforce_1 on Twitter. if you if you want to follow him, a big lover of winter weather and all things big time weather, big newsmaking weather events. He's on top of it. And uh again, he helped me out during Irma going down to uh Isa Marada
and Marathon and that area, Vodka to set up the weather station and the camera there. And he tagged me on the Twitter there on March 21st with another winter storm with big waves coming in coming over the seaw wall. Um, so yeah, it was a very impactful March for winter storms
and a lot uh for me to keep up with.
Now, slowing things down just a little bit, we get towards that last uh third
of March there, and we had a really big
event coming up that I was going to be a part of, and that is the Mississippi State University Severe Weather Symposium 2018 edition. I had been going

I think I was there in 2016 2017 and

this would be my third year maybe second definitely my uh definitely my second maybe my third that's what I was trying to say and this was a really big deal
because I would go and actually do a
guest lecture at Greg Nordstrom's class
uh on this particular day the March 23rd is when I did that. Um so I drove out to Starkville. that's where MSU is. And um

you know talking about my presentation coming up at that symposium and it was it was really neat to be able to speak to the class and what we did in that class. I remember um I kind of
focused it's like an hour long on how we

got to where we're going to see that weekend kind of a preview at the symposium. And
so I probably did the class on a Friday. that would make sense. And then the symposium was that weekend. And there's some big names that go to this symposium, by the way. James Span, um I
don't know if Reed Timmer has ever presented there, but I've been there a few times. And then you have different people from the weather service, folks from Storm Prediction Center, alumnists from or alumni since it's plural from
MSU, you name it. a a very um well-run,

extraordinary weekend of learning from some terrific people. And you get to meet all these future meteorologists. And at this time, people like Dylan Federico, they were still in school. Yo know, Dylan now a meteorologist at this current recording date down in South Florida. Um so you meet the upandcomers as well that I might even work with in the future. So, the big deal about this is I would get sort of a practice run at
presenting our 2017 work and I could
refine things and see how things went. And remember, I'm doing PowerPoint, so I I I specifically remember getting in working with the AV person. Okay, here's the thumb drive with my presentation. Here are all the files that go with it. Please make sure those are all loaded on your computer so that everything plays properly. We did a few um you know, a few minutes before everything started, a little testing, make sure the videos worked cuz I didn't want to look like a fool at this um venue. Uh it was a

really nice lecture hall with a huge screen. Um I think it was the um I I

can't remember if too bad I can't just text Greg and ask him which hall it was
in, but that's fine. um kind of doesn't

matter even though you know it it's a big deal uh where it was. It was a very very good venue. That's my point here. I just can't remember the name of it. But those details that's fine. Um so I was going to be doing that. And it's interesting because while I was there and I also this just pops back in like a I remember that. Um, while I was there,
um, the Weather Channel broke the news
that Byron Allen, who is the CEO of the

Allen Media Group, bought the Weather Channel. And so they would all be uh,

working with Byron and his group. And this was a big deal. I don't remember how much it was, maybe 300 million if I'm not mistaken. And so all that news broke while I was at MSU at this conference. And um I just I just thought

I'd throw that out there. This was when it changed hands that it was no longer going to be managed by like NBC Universal, Blackstone, and whoever the
other ones, Bane Capital or something like Byron Allen and Allen Media bought the Weather Channel. And so we were all wondering, okay, will this change things? How are things going to I was certainly wondering, will this change my relationship with them and so forth, but here's an interesting connection, just so you know, and I might have talked about this before. I've been doing this podcast five or six years. I can't remember everything I've told you about, but here's one thing about Byron Allen.
So, in the 1980s, there was a reality
show before we thought of them as reality shows called Real People. That
was on NBC. ABC had one called That's
Incredible. And these were stories about
ordinary people that did incredible things or had a neat story. And these two shows were in competition with each other. That's incredible. You know, they might have a guy that could deadlift 800 lb or pull a train with a rope or something, you know, whatever. And then Real People was more um just ordinary
people that did extraordinary things, had a neat little story. Anyway, Byron Allen was one of the hosts. They had several people. Sarah Purcell, there was Skip Stevenson, Fred Willard was on there from time to time. Um, and yo just different Bill Rafferty. Uh, those are the names. But Byron Allen, a comedian, entertainer, he was on that show and so was I. When I was nine years
old, uh they came and did a story about
me and a chicken that I had, a hen named
Penny that was my pet, like a dog. But I
was fascinated with birds. Birds fly away. My mom and dad said, "Well, why don't we get you a chicken and you can learn how to raise it and you know it'll live longer, whatever." And me and that chicken were just like best friends. and
my grandmother sent in a little write up about it in the early '8s to NBC and

long story short, they got in touch with us and wanted to do a segment on My Chicken and me, um, Penny. Here's
another little small part. The secretary
that was working between us and all the producers was a woman named Beth Grant, who is from Greenville, North Carolina, if I'm not mistaken, which is where Sandra Bulock is from. Anyway, Beth Grant has been an actress in all kinds of movies. She was in Rainman. She was in Speed and a bunch of others. You can look her up on IMDb. But small world,
right? And I remember telling Tom at the Weather Channel, you know, the guy that my handler, if you will, there. I don't have a better word for him. He's not my boss, but um the guy at the Weather Channel that I'd make the deals with and you know, decide what we're going to cover, what we're not going to cover, whatever you call him in that role. I remember texting him. Like, dude, when Byron Allen shows up at the Weather Channel, if you get a moment, tell him, "Hey, you know, one of the guys that works with us was on your Real People show back in 1980 or whatever it was."
So, there you go. There's that. All right. So, moving on along. Uh, I did the symposium and boy oh boy,

uh, I don't mean to brag, but I blew the doors off that place. It was phenomenal.
And I mean, why not, right? I mean, we came in and I do represent the we, the
plural of all of us, right? Of of me. It's we. The plural of I is we, I guess,
right? It's our project, you know, and
our crowdfunding was, you know, not the the juggernaut that it is today. We've done so much since then. Yes. But my work with Carrie, my work with Greg Nordstrom and Todd and just all
these different people, Watkins and Jesse Bass, and then the people that helped to fund things or lend ideas.
Again, it was small to mediumsize at
this point and would soon grow over the years to some of the amazing stuff we've done since then, but I'm there representing everything that got us to that point is my point. And so blowing
the doors off the place with a terrific presentation is bragging about our
collective um ability and what we could all do working together to solve some of these problems. How to document the weather in maybe a slightly better way and collect data and how hard that is. You know, all of that, the whole reason we're here. And it was just phenomenal to be able to
convey that to the group. And one person
in particular that was in attendance and speaking as well, he was also presenting
was this guy named Taylor Trogden from
the National Hurricane Center and he is a very very important figure in all of this. He is on the storm surge unit and that is the group that is responsible
for all things related to storm surge. all the products, the watches, the warnings, the experimental stuff, the modeling, you name it, Taylor's part of that. And the fact that he was presenting at the same symposium, the same weekend that I was, you know, the
stars all aligned because he's going to play this pivotal role later on in 2018
when it comes to Hurricane Michael. So, just remember that name, Taylor.
big big deal that we got to meet that I got to see his presentation obviously about storm surge products that were coming online experimental stuff what have you and then of course he saw my presentation and he was well aware of the work that I had done all the way up to this point and in fact remember he and I were on the phone with each other texting as you might recall during Irma
so he's been a big fan of all of this stuff a big supporter a big proponent But we finally got to meet in person. And then it's it's those uh interpersonal meetings that really matter where yo get to put a face to the name and yo get to know somebody and you just there's something about that colleague. I don't know if I'm making that word up or not, but there it is. Colleagues that
matters. That's a there's friendships and those are great, but these colleague ships I think are also very important when it comes to trade craft and in our
situation working together somehow
someway. We had already done so a little bit again through the 2017 season especially all the progress that had been made with the Logitech cams so forth and so on and you know Irma and
the trials and tribulations related to that the testing of the new GoPro system
during Hurricane Nate. You know everything just kept building upon something previous and meeting him in
person was a really really big deal at
the symposium there at Mississippi State. So truly an honor that I was able to be there and that connection that was made would have such incredible

ramifications on the positive side uh
down the road. That is for sure. So I'm
all done with the symposium. I start to make my way back home to North Carolina.
And um I remember as I went back uh

Starkville to Wilmington. You passed through Atlanta at some point and I stopped in and met up with a guy named
Josh uh who worked and Josh Bllelock's
his name. Uh he worked at the um aquarium there uh at the Georgia
Aquarium in Atlanta. And Josh Bllelock
had been on a couple of our hurricane

um episodes, I think maybe even a live event. I know he's been on something we've done with the hurricane track brand over the years discussing
uh how hurricanes impact marine life,
you know, because that was one of his specialties. And I know we talked about the big El Nino of 2015 and how it

impacted sea life, especially mammals
off the coast of Southern California. You had this high mortality. So anyway, I got to stop in h it's springtime in Atlanta. I'm going to save these pictures. This is pretty cool. And by the way, we're up to March 25th. So we're almost done with March and this episode. Uh but here we are. This is Atlanta, Georgia. Nice picture from one of the parks there. I don't know if this is Centennial Park, but clearly I'm at a park in Atlanta and I'm over at the uh

Sunrust Pier 225. Sunrust was the
sponsor. That is where the sea lions were. This is picture number 28. So, we have both pictures 27 and 28 here for you. And I got to have a little private tour of the aquarium as um Josh's guest.

And that was really really neat as I made my way back to North Carolina. And
so we get up to the very end of uh March

and I am really excited about April, yo

know, because we have the National Tropical Weather Conference coming up and I had already sort of done a test uh
test run of my presentation at the
severe weather symposium in Mississippi
and I was really excited. It was very wellreceived and I felt very confident that people were going to really
appreciate the work that we had put in that got us to this point that allowed us to do what we did in 2017. Again, it's an accumulation of hard work and ideas from a lot of different people. I'm just the front man for it. And you know, I was really
looking forward to the spring and I
mean, we're already in spring, but yo know, the spring months of conference time, especially the big conference down at South Padre and just, you know,

again, building on all the success to this point. So, we wrap up March, we get into the early part of April, and I might as well just cover parts of this right here because it does spill over into the National Tropical Weather Conference. Um, and then we'll wrap up this episode. I think that works just fine. So, I'll save this picture. This will be picture number 29. I think we're up to. That is indeed correct. South
Padre Island. I'm down there at this point. So, we're spilling over from March into April. This is April the 4th.
And, uh, at this time it was held at the Hilton Garden Inn. It has since moved over to the uh courtyard by Marriott just a couple of doors down in beautiful
South Padre. But the really remarkable
thing about the conference, it is small.
We do not have 2,000 people and that is
good. You know, you want everything to grow. Yes. But you don't want it to be that big because the smallness of this
150 200 people at the most really gives
us an opportunity to network a lot better. It is such a close-knit amazing
group of scientists, broadcasters, emergency management people, folks from the National Hurricane Center, uh people from just uh websites like Storm 2K. a
lot of the people that administer that website, a longunning, very popular website, Storm 2K, uh, and a supporter
of ours. I guess people call that an underwriter. Yeah, they're one of our patrons. Um, some representatives from
Storm 2K come to this conference regularly and we get to share what we've
done, the work we've accomplished, yo know, try to hatch new ideas and just
talk shop. It's amazing. So, at the 2018

conference, we had um some really
amazing presentations. One that stood out uh that I remember especially was from uh Dr. Josh Worman and his crew

from the Center for Severe Weather Research talking about their mobile
Doppler that was right there in the eye
of Harvey. And I don't have any pictures. cuz I took video and posted them. But it was just an incredible research that they were showing and observations of the eyewall of Harvey

and these insane messortices. It was not
a round smooth inner eyewall. It was
kind of jagged with these different lumps on it that represented these insane downburst of twisting wind almost
like a tornado. But they're not tornadoes. They're I mean probably not even cousins honestly, but you do yo get these weird rotating areas uh just
from the Earth's corololis force. I mean you look out you see little leaves or small piles of garbage that whip up. Even the steam on your pot on the stove top when it starts to rise will make these little twirls sometimes or swirls, whatever. Um and so you can imagine it's really easy to do that in the eyewall of a truly intense hurricane. And so the conference just gives us a chance to get exposed to that kind of stuff, you know, that

kind of research, that kind of just
amazing scientist that you hear about,
especially as you grow up like I did some of these people over the years. Dr. Neil Frank was there. uh Max Mayfield, of course, I've known him since 1999, but just to be a part of it was truly
truly special. And that got us through,

you know, the first part of April. And really at this point, the only thing that's left is to get into eventually
just about six weeks away, whatever the case may be, close to it, the 2018
hurricane season. And we were ready. yo know, conferences are done, symposiums are done. I've presented everything we've accomplished. We're working on keeping these neescams tested, and we're
looking ahead. And I never like to say looking forward to that sounds like, oh, it's going to be fun. But we're looking ahead with great anticipation that we
have some of the best technology that we've ever had to observe hurricanes in
a completely safe manner that shows people these impacts like they've never seen them before. We're ready. And this is even, you know, more than I was thinking was possible. like these new nest cams. I'm telling you folks, they were going to be absolutely pivotal. And
and as I'm going to talk about when we get into the next episode, the GoPro cams, those really needed to be explored more as well. The power of those GoPros, those little small cameras that my wife always says look like they come out of a cracker jack box. Something that small, you could literally put it in your mouth and, you know, close your mouth around it and nobody could see it. Like really that's $500? Yes, it is. And that's for a reason because they are that good. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode. How we started to really figure out, all right, we know we can do live. How do we do a backup recording if the live stuff does fail? Cuz you know it's going to fail eventually for some reason. The terrestrial network goes down, theft, you know, a wave washes a
camera away, you know, just whatever. Anything could happen. When a sea monster gets it, you need some kind of backup. And the GoPro cams, we had tested it with time lapse in Hurricane Nate. Now, it was time to figure out, reverse engineer, solve this problem. How do we get a GoPro cam to record for

the longest theoretical time possible? We were going to try to solve that mystery and um crack the code as it were
to make that happen in time for the 2018 hurricane season. All right, so that is it for this edition of Stories from the Hurricane Highway. I am, of course, your host, Mark Sudith. I'll talk to yo again real soon.